Resolutions
by MMB
Summary: Happily ever after never seemed so far away. Sequel to Truth and Consequences. Complete posting at last.
1. Picking Up the Pieces Again

Disclaimer: They aren't mine, and I'm not making any money at this. I'm just borrowing them for a bit and giving them new friends to play with and new situations to live through. Please don't kill me...  
  
Author's note: This is the last offering in a series of stories that are my idea of what happened in the Pretender universe after the end of the TV movie "Island of the Haunted." In order to understand previous events that have occurred and original characters that have been introduced in previous installments, you will need to read, in chronological order: Retrospective, Picking Up The Pieces, Family Ties, Balancing the Scales, and Truth and Consequences.  
  
Resolutions - 1  
  
Picking Up the Pieces Again  
  
by MMB  
  
Sam pulled the Centre limousine up right next to the jet on the tarmac, then turned in his seat and looked behind him. "You want to walk up those steps, Deb, or would you let me carry you so you don't hurt your foot?"  
  
Deb peered out the window at the sleek, black jet and then glanced back at the huge Security Chief. During the past few days, while waiting for her therapist and physician to give the all clear for her to be released, Sam had been a nearly constant companion. Whatever business had kept him shuffling back and forth between Los Angeles and Victorville had evidently been concluded the previous day, for all day yesterday he'd spent most of his time sitting in her room with her, talking or playing checkers and backgammon.   
  
The checker games had genuinely raised her spirits and made her much more comfortable with the ex-sweeper, since his skill on the checkerboard seemed not to have gotten appreciably better over the years since Miss Parker had had him baby-sit her. Sam had played with her, consoled, cajoled and teased her like an uncle, making her smile and even laugh occasionally - and in the process won back her trust and respect. He'd been there to lean on during slow walks down the hospital hallways, and she'd learned that she didn't have to flinch whenever he moved quickly or came too close.  
  
And now, seeing his friendly face over the top of the front seat, she knew that she was safe with him. Still she hesitated and then turned to Miss Parker. "I suppose I could make it..."  
  
"You know what Doctor Ramsey said," Miss Parker reminded her gently. "If you get a chance to take it easy on that foot, you're supposed to take it." She looked up at Sam. "She'll take that lift, if you don't mind."  
  
"Yes, ma'am." The man's face crinkled into a contented smile, and he climbed from behind the wheel and handed the few pieces of luggage to one of the on-duty sweepers to stow aboard before opening the door next to Deb. "Scoot over closer, Debbie," he directed, then slid his huge hands beneath her knees and behind her back under one arm and lifted slowly and steadily. Deb wrapped an arm around the man's thick neck to steady herself and leaned willingly into him. This was Sam, she reminded herself, and him carrying her up the steps of a jet meant that she was on her way HOME!  
  
"OK, so you know what I want you to do?" Miss Parker paused on her short walk to the jet to speak with Dave Anzio, the man she had appointed from the bank of new sweepers to replace Flores at long last as the chief of the LA Centre satellite office. "I want a report on my desk in Blue Cove in one week on your progress."  
  
Anzio, a short and wiry man who was much stronger and dangerous than he appeared, gave his boss a nod. "Yes, ma'am. Consider it half-written."  
  
She liked his style. He was a natty dresser and very no-nonsense in his business dealings. "Your probationary period will be like the others - six months. At that time, you'll return to Delaware for a review and, if you're doing your job properly, an assignation of stock and other benefits that go with your new position."  
  
The little Italian man's eyes glittered, and he spared a glance of gratitude toward the back of the man he was replacing. Sam had chosen him, of all the sweepers currently stationed in Los Angeles, as the most capable of handling the busy office. Before he'd left to stay with the young lady, Sam had spent the better part of an entire day briefing him on protocols and procedures that would need to be followed - and then told him the kind of compensation would be his if he could hang onto the job long enough to make it truly his. For a man with a young family, it was enough incentive for a lifetime's worth of effort.  
  
"Yes, ma'am. I look forward to seeing you in February, then." He shook her hand, finding her handshake firm and confident. He remembered back to his one interview with the man who had originally hired him, Mr. Raines, and decided that he by far preferred this new Chairman. Miss Parker had always had a reputation for being tough and no-nonsense - the few hours he'd spent with her prior to riding up with her in the limousine to pick up her niece had given him a chance to reassess that reputation. She had been very clear in punctuating the instructions Sam had already given him and had given him the kind of respect as a valued and integral employee he doubted would have ever come his way from Raines. He found he genuinely liked the woman and could see himself very contented working for her.  
  
Miss Parker nodded at him in satisfaction. Sam had chosen well - this Dave Anzio had the kind of quiet get-up-and-go that could prove very useful to the new Centre she envisioned. The Los Angeles office had always been a west-coast hub for Centre activity. This was an arrangement that she had no intention of changing - and for which she needed JUST the right person. The new Centre she was still pulling together needed new blood in the chain of command - people who weren't dedicated to double-dealings and power struggles as daily routine - and from what Sam had told her, Anzio sounded like he would fit right in. Between his orientation with Sam and now interview with her, Anzio knew exactly where he stood, and seemed ready to carry out her wishes and make wise decisions on her behalf.  
  
"Good luck, then." She turned and walked the short distance to the jet and mounted the steps. Inside, she saw that Sam had put Deb into a window seat where she could look down and enjoy the view. "All set?" she asked the girl.  
  
Deb nodded. She wasn't unhappy to see the end of this God-forsaken desert community at all - and the sooner she was away from California completely, the better she would like it. "Any time you are," she replied.  
  
Sam, listening, rose and went to knock on the pilot's door. "Let's go," he said loudly enough to penetrate the thin barrier, then planted himself back in his favorite seat - facing the back of the fuselage so that he could observe everything that went on - and strapped himself in. Miss Parker had already taken the inside seat next to Deb and had put her hand over Deb's on the armrest, patting it comfortingly.  
  
The hum of the jet's powerful engines built to a high-pitched whine, and then they were moving. As the little jet rocketed down the runway and then threw itself into the air, Deb leaned back and watched the ground fall away. Then she turned away from the window and closed her eyes. It was done - it was behind her now, all of it. It had to be.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Emily dried her hands on a small towel and picked up the handset of the telephone. "Russell's..."  
  
"Hi Em, it's Missy."  
  
Emily smiled. "I was starting to wonder when you guys would start heading back..."  
  
Miss Parker chuckled. "I hate to admit it, but I did have a small bit of business to transact before the jet took off. But we're up now, and we should be there in a couple of hours."  
  
"I'll tell Ethan..."  
  
"Not necessary this time," Miss Parker said regretfully, "as much as I know my brother just LOVES playing chauffeur to me. I'll have a Centre limo and my Security Chief as driver so as not to intrude on anybody's schedule there." She paused, listening. "How are things going there today?"  
  
"All quiet," Emily answered, walking through the kitchen door to observe the goings-on in the living room. Sammy and Davy were contentedly playing with Sammy's cars and trucks again, while Margaret had Ginger up on the couch cuddled close to her while she read from a book of stories to her. "The boys are into the trucks again, and Mom's reading to Ginger."  
  
Miss Parker closed her eyes, picturing the homey scene. "Tell my kids I'll be there as soon as I can - and remind Davy that he needs to set himself up in Ginger's room so Deb can have the guest room tonight. Nine chances out of ten, with Sammy there, he's forgotten."  
  
"Mom and I were ahead of you there," Emily chuckled. "We wouldn't let the boys get down to their city-building until Davy had finished getting himself set up. And he had Ginger helping him, so it got done very fast."  
  
Now Miss Parker laughed softly. "I bet. And I bet neither of those two gets any sleep tonight..."  
  
"Probably not," Emily agreed with her. Her eyes rested on the dark-haired girl holding her teddy bear close and listening to her grandmother's story with a rapt face. "She's going to miss him desperately after you leave, you know..."  
  
"I know... And he'll miss her too." Miss Parker was still astounded at the speed at which her son and Jarod's soon-to-be-adopted daughter had bonded to each other. When Sammy wasn't around, the two were virtually inseparable. "I almost hate to split them up, but Davy has school starting in just a couple of weeks..."  
  
"Too bad you can't take her with you," Emily commented gently. "From the sounds of things, you know Jarod and Ethan have narrowed the field of potential partners to just a couple of guys..."  
  
"Yes, but she needs to stay there in California until the adoption process is finished," Miss Parker reminded her soon-to-be sister-in-law. "I may have been able to get the wheels of bureaucracy to turn faster, grant Jarod his full guardianship already and put the adoption assessment process on a fast track, but it will still take a little while longer before he gets a court date. I don't know that pushing that much more would be such a great idea..."  
  
"I know." Emily grumbled softly. "I just want... Heck, what am I saying? Sprite's adoption being final means Jarod leaving for Delaware - and I'm gonna miss HIM a lot!"  
  
Miss Parker chuckled at what had become a sad inside joke between the two women. "I'm sorry about that..."  
  
"Don't be! I'd have to be an idiot not to see how happy he is with you. It's time for him to have his family life with you now - and there's nothing that says that we can't visit back and forth. IF we can convince Mom that it's safe to actually go back to Delaware again..."  
  
Miss Parker leaned against the bulkhead and smiled. Her improved relationship with Jarod's mother and sister had been one of the unexpected little boons of this trip - so many of the reasons for animosity and distrust on both sides had been slowly erased over days of long heartfelt conversations. She was genuinely fond of Jarod's California family now - leaving them behind on the other side of the world, practically, would leave a small hole in her heart now. "Well, I suppose I need to get back to my seat and let you get back to whatever you were doing," she said finally. "We can always yak when I get home."  
  
"OK - sounds like a plan. See you in a few."  
  
"Bye now." Miss Parker disconnected the call and put her cell phone back in her jacket pocket. She looked over at Deb, who was still sitting very quietly in her seat with her head leaned back against the headrest and her eyes shut. From somewhere, Sam had found a low cardboard box and topped it with a pillow to hold up the damaged foot. "Deb? You awake?" Slowly the blonde head straightened and the blue eyes opened. "Would you like some water, or maybe some soda?"  
  
"Do you have any diet cola?" Deb asked sleepily. "I haven't had any for a while now, and all the hospital would give me was one kind of juice or another - or milk..."  
  
Miss Parker bent to the small refrigerator and sorted through the various cans that were stored there. "Found one!" she called in triumph and lifted it. "You want it in a cup, or..."  
  
"Just in the can is fine," Deb shifted in her seat to make herself more comfortable and help herself wake up a bit more. She took the can from Miss Parker. "Thanks."  
  
"Sam?"  
  
"I'm fine," the big man waved his hand in front of him to the negative, "thanks."   
  
She took an old-fashioned glass from the wet bar and filled it with ice and then water for herself before returning to her seat next to Deb.   
  
"We're just staying the one night at Jarod's, right?" Deb asked, turning her head to look at the woman who had rescued her from the hospital and the prying therapist. "We're going HOME tomorrow?"  
  
Miss Parker didn't look overwhelmingly thrilled, but she nodded. "We need to get you home where you belong, and Davy back before school starts. And, much as I might like otherwise, I have to go back to work one of these days." She looked over at Deb and smiled as she patted the hand that still rested on the barrier between their seats. "But you'll like Jarod's house, Deb - right on the ocean, pretty view from the balcony. I think Jarod's mom and sister are cooking tonight - everybody will be at Jarod's for supper and to at least get a chance to meet you before you leave."  
  
Deb's face had grown quiet and almost stony, and Miss Parker frowned slightly. She would be very glad when she had the girl home, where Sydney would be able to take charge of her further therapy to work through any parts of the trauma of being kidnapped and molested that the therapist at the hospital had left undone. There had been subtle hints that Deb's personality had changed significantly - her smile was less ready, her sense of humor dampened, and now she was displaying a real reluctance to meet new people.   
  
She knew it had been a hard day for the Broots girl - hopefully the last hard day until the day she had to testify at trials - and she sincerely hoped that part of the sullenness now was simple fatigue and emotional release of tension. Arrangements had been made for her to finally give her deposition to the police in the therapeutic setting her therapist had insisted on. A female officer had been dispatched to tape the interview, and at long last Deb had told what she remembered of being snatched as she dashed in terror from Sydney's house in the middle of the night.   
  
Her descriptions of how easily she'd been taken and her fleeting impressions during the plane trip to California had been stark. The time she'd spent with the books of mug shots, picking out the faces of the men who had taken her, had made her need to take a break to regain her composure when she saw for the first time since her rescue the face of the man who had touched her and given her almost a week's worth of nightmares. The worst of it, however, had come as Miss Parker had sat quietly while Deb detailed what that man had done to her while she'd been alone with him. Deb's tears had flowed freely, while Miss Parker's blood had flowed like acid within not only for the wounded girl who had yet to even begin to heal, but also in realization that her son had witnessed part of the outrage - been invited to observe, in fact.   
  
Duncan and Cordoba had already been transported back to Delaware to sit in the Dover jail with Flores and their other two confederates pending their federal trial on kidnapping, attempted murder and molestation charges. Seeing the pain Deb was still in, a pain that the girl struggled to keep hidden deep inside her, Miss Parker wished that she'd kept Duncan in her own custody instead of turning him over to the authorities. She wanted revenge in the worst kind of way for what had been done. Her fury when she thought of those two men - of having to sit in a courtroom while they were tried - frightened her. The persona of Lyle that had gotten her through the ordeal was far too close to her yet - and Lyle wouldn't have sat back and let the legal system do what would be far more satisfying accomplished in person.   
  
Still, Deb was at least on the first leg of a journey that would take her home, and at least Davy would be there in Monterey that evening. With any luck, the company of the one person who understood better than anybody else what she'd been through would help buoy her. Davy had worried to his mother at length after her first solo trip down to visit and cheer Deb while she was still hospitalized, his eyes haunted by the thought that he'd left Deb behind after all.   
  
That had been only one of several of the very subtle signs her son had shown that the ordeal had changed him too. The experience had matured him in ways that were not right for one so young - and his new tendency to want to take responsibility for things going wrong around him regardless of whether it was right or reasonable was only the most obvious. He had grown cautious and shier around new people. As much as he had wanted to meet his grandmother and the brother both his parents shared, it had taken the better part of two days for him to genuinely warm to them so that he smiled easily again.  
  
"Are you OK?" she asked the girl softly, smoothing some of the blonde hair back from her face.  
  
"I just want to go HOME," Deb said firmly and unhappily, then turned her face away from Miss Parker and stared out the little window without really looking at anything.  
  
No, Miss Parker thought as she exchanged a worried glance with Sam, who'd heard the entire exchange, things weren't going to be back to normal for a while yet.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"Mr. Tyler? There's a Colonel Stiller on line two for you, sir." Mei Chiang announced over the intercom.  
  
Tyler grimaced in frustration. This was the second time since Miss Parker had left him in sole charge of keeping the Centre afloat while she took care of important family business that this particular Pentagon official had asked for an appointment - and the third military visitor that had come calling because of executive decisions to cease work on some projects. Miss Parker had handled one such visit before she left - and the continued number of calls was starting to worry him.  
  
The first time this man had walked into the office and seen someone besides Miss Parker behind the desk, he had turned on his heel and stormed from the room, bullying Mei Chiang for having him see someone other than the Chairman herself.   
  
Tyler had had to admire the poise and unflappable nature of the pretty Chinese secretary that Miss Parker had taken for herself. Without seeming to have any anxiety from the blustering ire that the Air Force colonel was throwing at her, she simply told the man - several times until he finally would listen to her - that Tyler WAS in charge of the Centre until Miss Parker's return. That hadn't set well either, and Stiller had stormed off in a huff.  
  
Now he was back again. Well, Mei Chiang wasn't the only one who could put on a bulletproof face. "Show him in," he responded, then arranged himself with his hands folded neatly on the desk in front of him. All too soon, as far as he was concerned, the door to his office opened and a slightly red-faced man in a crisp uniform marched in. "Colonel Stiller, I'm Cody Tyler, Miss Parker's assistant. Please," he rose and shook the man's hand and then gestured to one of the chairs in front of the desk, "be seated." He sat down himself and waited until the military man had finally folded his tall frame into the chair. "Now, what can the Centre do for you today?"  
  
"You can tell me why the hell my pharmaceutical project has been kill-filed," the man demanded in a low and dangerous voice.  
  
"Which project is that?" Tyler asked, reaching for the folder in which Miss Parker had left the list of military projects that she had decided were of questionable value and ordered stopped immediately.   
  
"Project Veracity," Stiller informed him bluntly and then watched as the young man at the desk sorted through a number of papers until he pulled the one he wanted out to read more completely.  
  
"I believe Miss Parker explained what was going on when she met with some of your colleagues about a week ago," the Southerner explained patiently. "She had serious concerns about the research being done without proper authorization by official Department of Defense personnel - the lack of an affidavit from any ranking Air Force official being one of the more glaring examples of what caused her concern."  
  
Stiller bristled - this was obviously not the kind of news that he'd wanted to hear. "My office has made several payments on this project..."  
  
Tyler nodded, still not letting the man's attitude get to him. "I see here that among the repayments made directly to the Pentagon for projects deemed inappropriate or inadequately authorized, a check in the amount of three hundred thousand dollars was cut as reimbursement for unused funds earmarked for Project Veracity." He lowered the paper. "I can make a copy of the documentation that I have, so that you can know for certain that we're not withholding any funding that rightfully belongs to you. But I suggest, sir, if you've not been refunded the money from your own people at the Pentagon, that you should take the matter up with THEM, and not US."  
  
"Now see here! You people signed a contract..." Stiller exploded.  
  
"Unfortunately, you signed your contract with the previous Chairman here. Since his removal, we've discovered that he was a man who was willing to have the Centre performing all kinds of research for all kinds of people - legitimate and otherwise. The administration of the Centre has changed, as much due to this fact as anything else, and the Centre is no longer willing to disregard legitimacy issues. In the case of ongoing projects, we have liquidated a goodly portion of our surplus in order to reimburse various former clients any funds earmarked for their projects, and we have a receipt on file showing that all research materials relating to Veracity were also turned over to a representative of the Pentagon, who signed for them." Tyler's voice became just a bit more firm and unyielding. "I suggest again, sir, that any questions or problems you have you should direct to your Pentagon representative who took responsibility for what happened to Veracity once it left our jurisdiction."  
  
"I don't know if you're aware of just who you're dealing with, son." Stiller's voice had grown low and even more dangerous. "I represent a branch of the United States Military that has a vested interest in developing adequate offensive tools to use in the defense of the country. Veracity held the potential for helping us crack suspected terrorists, giving us a head's-up on future attacks still in the planning stages. You CAN'T just drop out of the development of such an important tool without jeopardizing your chances at winning future military contracts."  
  
Tyler shrugged. "I'm really sorry, Colonel. The decision to scrap our involvement in Veracity wasn't mine, but Miss Parker's - and she's not here right now. I can pass along your concerns for our future ability to deal with the Pentagon," his tone had grown dry, "and, perhaps, you should consider scheduling another appointment with Miss Parker when she has returned. But until then..."  
  
"You mean you don't have the authority to put things back into place and just get your people back to work on Veracity?"  
  
"Colonel Stiller, Miss Parker left the Centre in my hands during her absence. I can do whatever the Hell I want that I think she would approve of. The problem is that, if this decision is any indication, she wouldn't approve of reactivating Veracity at the Centre at all."  
  
Stiller's eyes narrowed. "Meaning you either don't have the authority, or the balls, to do it."  
  
Tyler swallowed back a scathing retort. "I think our meeting is concluded, Colonel." He rose and walked over to his office door and opened it. "Further discussion at this time would be both futile and a waste of my time and yours. As I said, you can make an appointment with my secretary to speak with Miss Parker at a later date, if you wish."  
  
After enough time to tell Tyler just how much Stiller resented being dismissed in such a fashion, the military man rose and stalked over to the door. "I don't do business with errand-boys, BOY. I expect the person occupying the Chairman's office to have the ability and the will to do what's right."  
  
"I'm no errand-boy, SIR," Tyler finally let a little of his ire show, "and I believe that I AM exercising both the ability and the will to do what's right - both for the Centre and for my country. It just seems that our beliefs in that regard don't agree. Please do try your luck with Miss Parker - I will be interested in whether or not you have any better luck with her." Tyler watched the man walk past him the through the door. "Good day, sir."  
  
Stiller didn't even bother to stop at Mei Chiang's desk, but he stormed down the hallway toward the exit without looking to his left or his right. Tyler leaned against the door and commented to the secretary, "There goes one unhappy man."  
  
Mei Chiang nodded. "Very much, sir."  
  
Tyler straightened and looked at his watch. "It's getting late. Tell me what kind of appointment schedule I have for tomorrow, and then go ahead and take off."  
  
She dug out the loose-leaf notebook in which she kept all the appointments for the occupant of the Chairman's office and shook her head. "Looks like tomorrow's going to be a light day for you, sir. There's a representative from Dupont's R&D department at ten, and then you have a meeting at two thirty with the construction foremen and architects about progress on the reconstruction." She shrugged. "And that's it."  
  
"Yes!" Tyler shot his arm into the air in a victory gesture. "And Miss Parker will be back in her own saddle the day after that - and I can go back to being an errand-boy for real."  
  
"You're no errand boy, Mr. Tyler," Mei Chiang told him in a quiet and gently accented voice. "I think you've handled the job better than even Mr. Lyle would have, had he had any integrity at all - and certainly as well as Miss Parker could expect of you. That army man was nothing but a puff of smoke on the horizon - much hot air, little substance."  
  
That struck Tyler's funny bone and made him chuckle. "Thanks, Mei Chiang - I needed that."  
  
The classic Chinese features softened into an answering smile. "You're very welcome, Mr. Tyler. Good night, sir - I'll see you in the morning."  
  
"Good night." Tyler moved back through the office door and closed it behind him. Something was brewing, he knew. Since the organizational shake-up in the wake of a demolished Tower and her taking charge of the place, it seemed that there was always something brewing. When she had first told him of the kind of place that the Centre had been for years - the kind of work that had been done there and the apparent reason for its existence - he hadn't necessarily believed her.   
  
Now, however, between being part of the effort to disengage the Centre from its crime syndicate connections and now questionable military endeavors, he was starting to think that maybe she'd been making the picture even less ominous that it had really been. She'd asked him once, not long after they'd met, "what kind of organization keeps its own morgue?" He hadn't had a good answer for her then, and the answer that he was starting to put together now was even less comfortable to consider.  
  
He sat himself down at his desk and began to read up on this Project Veracity. Just what exactly had this Stiller been trying to acquire?   
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Sydney sighed in relief as Kevin carefully moved the CPM machine from the couch that had been his day bed and prison for over a week now. "Ah!" he breathed, moving his legs over the edge of the day bed and preparing to rise. "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I'm free at last..."  
  
Kevin only wrinkled his brows together. "But Sydney, you ARE free..." he began to complain, only to see his mentor chuckle and wave at him.  
  
"It's just a saying, Kevin - words to an old protest song," Sydney explained patiently and then carefully rose to his feet, hissing as the knee protested agonizingly at having weight put on it immediately after therapy. Kevin reached for the crutches that were the key to Sydney's mobility, and the older man carefully tucked them under his arms.  
  
"How's the side this evening?" the young Pretender asked.   
  
"A little stiff, but otherwise alright, I guess." Sydney began to move slowly and carefully in the direction of the bathroom - his usual routine now after spending the better part of the day strapped to his "gizmo". "Did you have a good time at the park?"  
  
Kevin nodded while he straightened up the sheets and covers on the day bed. "I miss having Deb or Davy with me, though."  
  
"They'll be back tomorrow evening," the old psychiatrist called from inside the bathroom before shutting the door.  
  
"I know," Kevin said to himself happily. Ever since Sydney had relayed the message from Miss Parker of Deb's pending release today, he'd felt a surge of excitement building inside him. How he'd missed her gentle mentoring into the world of a free young adult! And even Davy's childish antics had been sorely missed. Kevin suddenly realized that he'd genuinely missed the members of his family and was looking forward to having them back in his life again. It was an unfamiliar feeling - but he was finding anticipation wasn't all that bad when the coming event was a GOOD one...  
  
"Do you think that Deb will want to go to the movies when she gets home?" he pressed his mentor the moment the other man reappeared into the den.  
  
"Kevin," Sydney cautioned not for the first time. "You're going to need to remember that Deb has just been through something truly horrific. She may not be in the mood to do much of anything for a while other than just soak up the feeling of being safe at home again. And you remember that it took time for you to start to feel safe here again yourself - it may take her even longer to make that same adjustment."  
  
"Is she..." the young man began again, then waited for his mentor to work his way from the den into the kitchen to begin to go through the refrigerator in search of what would be their meal for the evening.  
  
"Is she what?"  
  
"Is she going to be OK?" Kevin's tone spoke his worry.  
  
"Physically, she'll be healing," Sydney answered slowly. "Emotionally..." He shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine at the moment. Miss Parker did say that her doctor there wanted her to stay off of her foot as much as possible until it was completely healed." He gave his new protégé a sharp look. "I doubt she'll be wanting to go over to the park and swing for a while, just so you know..."  
  
"I just want her to be all right." Kevin sank his chin in his hand.  
  
"I know," Sydney responded in sympathy. "So do I, for that matter. And with any luck, and maybe if she'll let me work with her a bit, we'll be able to get her back to as close to the way she was before all this began as possible. BUT..." he twisted about as best he could to gaze at Kevin over his shoulder, "we'll both have to be very patient with her. She ISN'T going to be the same person - and our pushing or trying to force her to be won't help matters."  
  
Kevin sighed, with no ready response to the advice. Yes, his best friend was coming home - but she wasn't going to be the same person she was when she left. It was confusing. Luckily, the telephone rang just as he was about to heave another heavy sigh that would have caught Sydney's attention and started him off on another round of cautionary advice again. "Hello?"  
  
"Hey, Kevin, this is Cody..."  
  
Kevin smiled. He and Cody had talked several times since Deb's disappearance, and the young man had become almost as much of a role model for him as Sydney was. "Hi, Cody."  
  
"Listen, do you think I could talk to Sydney for a minute?"  
  
"Sure." Kevin held the handset out. "It's Cody Tyler - for you."  
  
"For me?" Sydney frowned slightly and then took the phone. "This is Sydney."  
  
"I'm sorry to bother you - did I disrupt your dinner?"  
  
"Not at all." Sydney shook his head. "It was just in the planning stages. What can I do for you?"  
  
"First, DON'T tell Miss Parker I called you - we had a bet on that I wouldn't need to call you for help, and technically I'm not, but I'm guessing she'd still see this as reason to hit me up for a steak dinner..."  
  
Sydney was chuckling heartily. "I tell you what. Whether I tell her or not depends on just exactly what it is you have to ask me."  
  
Now Tyler was chuckling. He didn't know the aging psychiatrist very well, but what little he knew of the man told him that he had a good sense of humor and a willingness to play along when it came to his family. "I just want to pick your brain and see if you knew of a man by the name of Colonel Stiller."  
  
"Army?"  
  
"Air Force."  
  
Sydney thought for a while, trying to remember back to the few times over the years when he'd actually been present for some of the client demonstrations of Pretender-worked projects. He shook his head again. "I don't remember that name ever being mentioned that I was aware of. What's up?"  
  
"I just had him in my - Miss Parker's - office demanding that I restart a project that he evidently was the contact for. I was just wondering if you'd ever heard his name in conjunction with any other projects you knew of."  
  
Sydney leaned his backside against his kitchen counter so that he could take a little of the weight off of the bad knee and still be stable. "All I can tell you is that the Centre did a number of projects with various branches of the military over the years - and I'm certain that I've heard several names mentioned in regards to those projects over the years. But Stiller was never one of the ones I remember. You are aware that several of those projects that Miss Parker killed were probably black-ops oriented..."  
  
"That's exactly what this one sounds like - what other purposes could be put to a substance whose project name is 'Veracity' and, I was told, was supposed to be a substance to be used on cracking suspected terrorists?"  
  
"Don't get me started," Sydney replied wryly. "Some of the truth serums that Jarod worked on over the years I later found out were put to use as brain-washing tools. Several of those chemicals leave the mind very open to suggestion - making them ideal offensive tools in the wrong hands. Several were downright lethal in sufficient dosages, and some could have been better classified as chemical torture."  
  
Tyler was nodding. Sydney wasn't telling him anything that he hadn't already started to suspect, even though his knowledge of the terminology in the few documents left on the system pertaining to Veracity was extremely limited. "This is the third time we've had visits from the military about one cancelled project or another since Miss Parker took off - and I know she had at least one meeting with some Pentagon luminaries before she left. I'm starting to wonder whether there's a pattern developing - and/or whether we're going to have to be very careful lest we run afoul of government people not at all interested in seeing our rights protected, if you know what I mean..."  
  
"I agree with you. If you'll take a word of advice, you'll want to document all your meetings or telephone calls with these men and turn the information over to Miss Parker and Sam the moment they get back. You DO still have the surveillance equipment in the office and on the Chairman's telephone lines, don't you?"  
  
Tyler chuckled. "Sam wouldn't let Miss Parker remove them."  
  
"Good man!" Sydney's chuckle held no mirth. "Then get DSAs made of any meetings you had - especially this last one - so that she can review the data for any clues she needs Sam to follow. And get a typist to make a transcript of any phone calls you took from this Stiller or any other military man who sounded upset. You can't afford to let this lapse - knowing some of these people and what they're capable of, every minute counts."  
  
"Thanks, Sydney, I'll get right on it." Tyler paused. "So - what do you think? Are you going to tell her I called?"  
  
Sydney smiled. "I don't think so. I would imagine that she would have been bouncing these same ideas with me herself in your place - so why should she weasel a steak dinner out of you for something that she'd have done too?"  
  
Tyler laughed out loud. "I like the way you think, Sydney."  
  
"I'm just glad you were there to give her a chance to spend time with her family," Sydney told him sincerely. "Between the explosion and now this, she really hasn't taken the time to do that properly."  
  
"Glad to have done it," Tyler responded. "Talk to you later, then, and thanks again."  
  
"Good night, Tyler. Have a good evening."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
As she'd been promised when she'd called San Francisco office, there was a Centre limousine just waiting on the edge of the tarmac for the little jet to pull to a stop in front of the Centre's hangar. Within moments, the driver had pulled the limousine close and had the trunk open to receive any luggage. Sam carried the few bundles down the steps and placed them in the trunk himself, then patted the sweeper who had driven the car on the back. "I've called for a rental for you and the pilot to use to get yourselves a room at a local motel for the evening," he told the man. "I'll take over from here. We'll have the limo back to you in the morning."  
  
"Yes, sir."   
  
The sweeper then stood by holding the back door open as Sam went back up the steps of the jet and came back down only minutes later carrying a very pretty blonde girl in his arms. The sweeper opened the back door to the limo and stood back while Sam carefully deposited his cargo on the nearest seat. Behind Sam by just a few seconds was the Centre's Chairman, Miss Parker, dressed in very informal clothing. "Ma'am," the sweeper nodded his head respectfully as she passed by.  
  
Grey eyes came up and met very briefly and intensely with his, and the sweeper knew that his measure had been taken by one not only capable but likely to take such an action. "Thank you," was the astonishing thing to come out of her mouth. The sweeper's eyes widened - in all his years of standing guard over Centre assets, this was the first time he'd been thanked for doing his job properly - and by the Chairman herself at that. Just WAIT until he could tell the guys back in San Francisco!  
  
She climbed into the limousine without another word while Sam moved quickly to the driver's door and slid behind the wheel. The vehicle's quiet but powerful engine turned over and the long black car moved forward and then turned toward the gate that would lead back to the open road. Sam watched for the landmarks that Miss Parker had described to him that indicated where he should turn on the trip to Jarod's home. He had spent the last hour of the flight memorizing the directions she'd given him so as not to have to ask her again.  
  
Miss Parker sighed inwardly yet again. Deb was staring out the window of the limousine without much interest, her hands folded quietly in her lap. This was not the Deb Broots that she'd known and mothered over the years - that girl would have been chattering happily the entire trip. Maybe Jarod could give her some ideas on how to help the girl come out from under her dark cloud for the short term. As it was, she was starting to wonder if getting her into a institutionalized setting where she could get the kind of intensive therapy she needed hadn't been such a bad idea after all. She would call Sydney later that evening and spill her concerns into his ear and then wait for his assessment of the situation once Deb had been home long enough for him to see and talk to her at length.   
  
Sam skillfully steered the big car through increasingly narrower and narrower streets until he finally entered a lane that obviously dead-ended at virtually the water's edge. "This the place?" he asked Miss Parker, not sure which of the drives to slip into.  
  
"The last one," she directed, peering out and letting go a sigh of relief to see Jarod's little sports car parked in the garage. "You gotta know that it would be Jarod driving around in another one of those little bombs - the others are far too sensible for such things." With a chuckle, Sam nosed the limousine up the drive and close to the back bumper, then turned off the engine. Miss Parker reached for the door handle. "I'll get the bags, you take care of Deb..."  
  
"I can walk," the girl insisted quickly, not wanting to be seen as an invalid by the strangers she was about to meet.  
  
"Deb, no." Miss Parker shook her head firmly, then put her hand comfortingly on her shoulder. "You don't have to prove anything to anybody here."  
  
Deb ducked her head down, feeling herself fog with unshed tears. "You mean everybody here knows..."  
  
"Sweetheart," Miss Parker put her arm around her finally. "What they know is that you were injured and have been fighting an infection that kept you in the hospital - nothing else." Deb's blue eyes came up and looked sharply at her. "Jarod and I felt that nothing would be accomplished by telling them any of the rest of it. That part is private, and will stay that way."  
  
Deb nodded in gratitude. It was bad enough that those who knew her at home would be looking at her with pity - and making her feel dirty and used in the process - knowing that she didn't have to face a roomful of strangers doing the same thing was comforting. And her foot really did hurt, despite Sam carrying her and the wheelchair that had carried her before then...  
  
"Sam," Miss Parker beckoned as she headed for the trunk, and the big ex-sweeper reached in and carefully caught the girl up into his arms again as before. "This way." Miss Parker led the way around the carport posts and into the little courtyard that was the enclosed front yard to the house.   
  
The door flew open just as she was putting out her hand to the knob, and then she had Davy with his arms clasped tightly around her waist. "You're back!" he crowed happily, then looked up at Deb in Sam's keeping. "And you're here at last too! Hi Sam," he added to the big man.  
  
"Hi there," Deb relented and smiled a little smile for him. It WAS good to see Davy again.  
  
"Hey, Squirt," Sam answered at almost the same time. The boy looked and sounded much better than he had the last time he'd seen him - much less sunburned and gravel-voiced.  
  
"Davy, at least let your mother into the house!" Jarod's voice sounded as if he were standing just out of sight around the front door. The tall Pretender took charge of the door and pulled it open all the way so that his child-encumbered fiancée could squeeze through. "And there she is," he said gently to Deb, who leaned her head against Sam but smiled a greeting.  
  
"Hi, Uncle Jarod."  
  
"Sam."  
  
"Lab-rat."  
  
"You, young lady, get the comfy couch," Jarod announced, leading the way into his living room and pointing out a place already prepared with an ottoman handy for sore feet to rest upon.  
  
Miss Parker deposited the small bundles that were Deb's and Sam's bags on the floor out of the way and then looked around. "Where's Ginger?" she asked Jarod, who merely turned to jerk his nose in the direction of the kitchen. There, with eyes wide at the virtual procession that had just come into her new home, was the little girl, still clutching her teddy bear with its arm in a sling to her chest tightly. Miss Parker walked up to her slowly and then crouched down. "Hi, baby," she greeted the girl softly. "Did you have a good day?"  
  
Ginger's gaze flicked back and forth between the very big man who was helping get the new girl onto the couch comfortably and Her, and then nodded slowly.   
  
Miss Parker saw the wary glance. "That's Sam. I know he's very big and maybe a little scary, but he's just a big pussycat. He helps take care of me at work, keeps me safe - and he'll help keep you safe too, you'll see."  
  
Sam heard himself being mentioned and turned to find himself under the intense scrutiny of a tiny girl. Jarod pointed so that Deb could also see the child. "That's Ginger, Deb, Sam... Missy and I are adopting her." His lips curled into a gentle smirk. "We call her Sprite sometimes."  
  
Margaret came through the kitchen door and put a comforting hand on her little granddaughter's shoulder. "I'm thinking, that with your young friend not walking so well, that we could just have an indoor picnic and eat wherever we want," she told Miss Parker. "We don't always have to be so stuffy and formal and eat at a table..."  
  
"Sounds good to me." Miss Parker straightened to get a quick hug from Jarod's mother. "Very practical. One of these days, I'll be able to think like that..."  
  
Margaret chuckled. "Takes practice, my dear. Just practice."  
  
"I got my stuff moved into Ginger's room, like you wanted," Davy announced with pride.  
  
"That's what your Aunt told me," Miss Parker replied. "How about you - did you have a good day?"  
  
"Sammy and I played trucks most of the day, until he went home a little while ago."  
  
"A problem?" Miss Parker looked her question at Jarod and Margaret.   
  
Margaret chuckled again. "Nope. An accident with a glass of cherry drink."  
  
Davy had approached Deb now that he'd told his mother that he'd done as she'd asked. "Can you walk yet?" he asked her quietly.  
  
"Yeah, some," she answered equally softly, "but your mom has had Sam carrying me all over the place. My doctor told her he wanted me to take it easy, and I haven't taken a step on my own yet."  
  
"Enjoy the pampering, Short Stuff," Sam said, looking down and hearing the exchange. "When you get to your Grandpa Sydney's, he won't be in any shape to cart you around. He's pretty well stuck on his couch or on crutches until his knee heals."  
  
Davy and Deb exchanged a worried glance, and Deb's stomach turned sourly. More people had been hurt in that "dark time" than just she and Davy - Miss Parker had even mentioned Kevin's cut face once. Was there no way to escape the reminders... "I think I'll be ready to move around on my own by then anyway," she told him firmly.   
  
"Sam," Jarod beckoned, and the ex-sweeper walked over, "I'd like you to meet my mother."  
  
"Maggie," Margaret said, putting out her hand to someone she just knew at one time had been one of the people hunting her son. Since meeting and getting to know Missy a little bit over the last few days, she was starting to reassess her opinions of the people who had remained behind in Delaware that Jarod obviously cared for. Sam was one of those people - someone for whom Jarod had gained respect. For Jarod's sake, she'd give the man the benefit of the doubt.  
  
Sam shook her hand carefully. "Pleased to meet you, Maggie," he said, then added, "I'm glad I'm meeting you under THESE circumstances, ma'am."  
  
"Where are Ethan and Jay?" Miss Parker asked Jarod suddenly.  
  
"Jay went back with Em and Nathan, and he'll be over in about a half hour with them. Ethan had a few things to do at the office after hours - he should be by anytime now." Jarod looked down when he felt a tug on his pantsleg and saw Ginger trying to sidle up to him and away from Sam. He bent down and picked her up. "He's big, isn't he?" he asked softly. Ginger nodded. "Does he scare you?" She nodded again. Jarod looked into Sam's face and saw the briefest flash of sorrow and decided to take the matter into hand.  
  
"You know, Sprite, that Sam can give MUCH better tips than I can..." Jarod told her with a mischievous smirk on his face. "AND, if you can get him to do it, he'll put you up on his shoulders so that you can almost touch the ceiling."  
  
Ginger gave the huge man another penetrating gaze and then let herself snuggle down on His shoulder. Maybe the big man could give neat tip-overs - she still preferred His company to anybody else's.  
  
"Sorry, Sam," Jarod told his friend, "I tried."  
  
"That's OK, Jarod. We'll have lots of time to get over the scaries when you get home."  
  
There was a loud knock on the front door, and then Emily, Nathan, Ethan and Sammy were pouring through the portal. "Good. Everybody's here now," Jarod announced to nobody in particular. He put Ginger down. "You go see if your grandma needs anything," he directed her, and she trotted back toward the kitchen. "We'll put the kids at the coffee table," he announced, pulling the table out a bit from the couch so that all sides of it were available, "and dinner tonight is picnic-style."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"We simply can't have that," Stiller complained again, this time to a far more receptive audience.  
  
"The Centre has been the backbone of our research and development for decades," General Curtis sipped at his whiskey sour unhappily. "There have been so few R&D firms willing to take on our projects."  
  
"All of this because we weren't running through 'official' channels," Stiller complained again and took a big gulp of his beer. "And all our money - all our research to date - has been turned over to those paper-pushers at the Pentagon."  
  
"Shit," Curtis grumbled. "If the Pentagon has our stuff, we'll have to start from scratch if we can't think of a way to change this Miss Parker's mind about working for us."  
  
"Hell, she isn't even THERE to talk to. I ended up with a pimply-faced errand boy too scared of his boss' bark to just start Veracity back up on the QT without asking her permission."  
  
"What if," Curtis leaned forward, "we found out who the researchers were on the project originally, and we do our dealings straight with THEM?"  
  
"Timeframes, Doug, timeframes. Cliff Burkowitz wants to take a crack at a few of those Taliban boys in Guantanamo before the pressure builds to either deport them all home or they end up on trial."  
  
"So?" Curtis leaned back and ran his hand across his steel-grey buzz-cut, the light from the dim bulb above reflecting weakly in the huge ruby of his graduation ring from The Fortress.   
  
"Those Centre researchers aren't going to be just sitting around on their thumbs idle. No doubt the Parker woman will see to it that they get new projects to run. Even if we COULD get them to work for us under the table, the amount of time they'd be dedicating to our project would be seriously diminished - meaning that we wouldn't have Veracity by the time we need it."  
  
"But even that would be better than being absolutely dead in the water!" Curtis insisted vehemently and then looked around the dimly lit bar before leaning forward over the table toward his colleague again. "I know that you have contacts in the Centre - people who are just as concerned about the security of our country as we are - who'll be able to give you a name or two."  
  
"The errand-boy made it sound like the Centre handed over all the R&D materials for Veracity to those Pentagon lapdogs. That means that the researchers won't have their old paper to work from."  
  
Curtis just shook his head. "I have yet to meet any scientist worth his salt that doesn't keep PRIVATE notes about on-going projects. Not all of them are doing the work out of pure altruism - some of them know that a certain kind of information, given to the right party, can be extremely lucrative..."  
  
"So you're telling me," Stiller sipped thoughtfully at his beer, "that we not only need to find a Centre chemist who would be willing to work on Veracity on his own time - reimbursed by us, of course, but definitely moonlighting - but who was cagey enough to have held on to his research notes even when asked to turn them over?"  
  
"Face it, once we've uncovered a man like that, we'll be able to sell that information to others like us who want to have their projects re-activated." Curtis smiled, his tooth-filled grin cold and calculating. "After all, why should it only be the US military establishment that has a shadow hierarchy? If we can resurrect a ghost of the old Centre at the heart of the new..."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"I'm tired, Uncle Jarod," Deb said a little bit louder to be heard through the chatter of other voices. That did it - she finally had his attention after several attempts to catch his eye. "I think I'd like to lie down, please..."  
  
"Sam," Miss Parker also heard the call and motioned to her Security Chief, who rose immediately.  
  
"I think I'd really like to walk, if you don't mind," Deb insisted, holding up a hand to keep Sam at bay. "I just need to know which room you have me in..."  
  
"Doctor Ramsey..." Miss Parker started.  
  
"Please, Miss Parker? Doctor Ramsey WAS letting me walk up and down the halls at the hospital too, you know... and I haven't taken a step on my own all day..."  
  
Jarod rose and came over in front of Deb. "You can lean on me, and I'll show you the way," the Pretender moderated with an eye to Miss Parker. "I know how it is to get cabin fever just from not being able to move under your own power."  
  
Miss Parker nodded then. Deb had been very quiet throughout the entire meal, despite Jay's obvious attempts to engage the pretty girl in conversation. And she knew that Jarod had been aware of the situation, having caught his eye and shared a glance of concern with him more than once. Maybe he could get her to open up to him a little now, before they headed home.  
  
"Thanks," Deb said gratefully as she accepted Jarod's hand to help her pull herself to her feet and then felt his arm wrap around her middle to give her some stability as she walked.   
  
He paused them as he neared the small pile of luggage. "Which one of these is yours?"  
  
"The grocery sack," Deb said quietly. "I didn't exactly plan this trip..."  
  
Jarod refrained from commenting on that; he just bent to pick up the sack and help Deb down the hallway to his second guest room - which, until that day, had been Davy's. "The bathroom's just right across there," he pointed and then walked her into the bedroom and to sit on the bed. "Anything else I can get you?"  
  
"No," Deb said softly in a voice that he had to work hard to hear. "Just close the door when you leave. I'll be OK."  
  
"Deb," he said gently and then crouched in front of her, "you don't have to come back here and hide.  
  
"I know, Uncle Jarod. I'm not hiding, I promise," she lied glibly.   
  
From the expression in his dark eyes, she knew that he didn't believe her. But, for the time being, he was going to let the matter rest. "Good night then," he said, rising and then bending over her to drop a gentle kiss on her forehead. "Sleep well."  
  
"Good night," she said and watched him quietly close the door after himself, leaving her finally alone in the room.  
  
With a brusque movement, she brushed the sack with her meager belongings onto the floor so that she could just slip beneath the blanket and sheet without getting undressed. It hurt to slide her foot between the covers, but stretching out on the comfortable mattress with the covers pulled over her head more than made up for the discomfort.  
  
Now, at last, she was alone and could let loose the tears that had been slowly building up in her since the end of the police interrogation. It was SO hard, this Pretending, she decided. And she was going home, where Grandpa's quick eye and observant gaze would miss nothing.  
  
She rolled over, keeping the blankets pulled over her head, and not for the first time wished she was dead.  
  
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com 


	2. Separations

Resolutions - 2  
  
Separations  
  
by MMB  
  
The electronic scream of the alarm broke viciously through Jarod's slumber, and he threw out a careless arm and took three swipes at the device to finally hit the snooze alarm. Beside him, Miss Parker stirred, sighed and rolled, snuggling down comfortably on his shoulder with eyes still closed. "Not yet," she complained in a sleepy whine.  
  
"Nine more minutes," Jarod mumbled, putting his arms around her and holding her close. "Then we both gotta get up - you have to head home, and I have morning appointments, and we both need to take showers sometime before then..."  
  
"Why are vacations always two days shorter than we need them to be?" she grumbled back, her arm crossing his waist and holding him back. "It isn't fair..."  
  
Jarod buried his nose in her tumbled hair. "I have to admit that I miss you dreadfully when you're not with me," he murmured sadly and then kissed her forehead. "I'll miss you even more now that you've been here and made this place your own a little. And Ginger is really going to miss both you and Davy..."  
  
"She'll miss Davy more," she responded quickly. "She still only just tolerates me."  
  
"That's a big step for her. Look at it this way: at least she isn't running away from you like she did at first..."  
  
Miss Parker sighed. "Yeah, I suppose..." She still hadn't been allowed to brush the little girl's hair - that was a task the child reserved solely for her official guardian.   
  
Jarod lay still, holding his love close and carving the moment into his memory to keep him warm until he could rejoin her in Delaware. That was another thing that wasn't fair - that his family had two separate parts now, each living on opposite sides of the continent. At least, it seemed, the two halves were willing to speak to each other at long last.  
  
From beyond their bedroom door, the two could hear the patter of scrambling feet down the hallway in the direction of the kitchen. "I don't believe it - they're up already too," he said in a resigned tone.  
  
"I'm surprised they aren't still dead to the world," she replied, snuggling in closer and hanging on just a little tighter. "They were still awake and giggling at midnight, you know..."  
  
"We're going to have our hands full with them eventually, that's for sure," he agreed with a sleepy chuckle. "Quite a family we've got, Missy..."  
  
"Mmm-hmm," she nodded agreement against his shoulder. "I've been thinking. My summerhouse only has the two bedrooms, you know, and we're going to need three when you come home to stay..."  
  
"Yeah..." Jarod's fingertips began weaving lazy circles on her bare shoulders.  
  
"So... my family's town house has been empty since Mr. Parker died," she pressed on quietly. "It has four bedrooms and is much more roomy."  
  
"Are you sure?" he asked her gently. "I know some of the memories you have of that place..."  
  
"We can start making new memories there, Jarod - good ones. It's time that I put some of those old ghosts to rest too now..."  
  
"What about the summerhouse?" he pressed, his hand now swirling down her back. "Will you sell it?"  
  
"I don't think so," she answered after thinking about it for a little while. "For one thing, your family will need a place to stay when they come to visit..."  
  
"Granted that Mom can be convinced that Satan doesn't still live in Blue Cove under the alias of Dr. Sydney Green, that is," he commented in amusement.  
  
"AND I have the ideal caretaker in mind for taking care of the place between times."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"Yeah..." She smiled. "A certain Japanese gentleman needs to stay out of the public eye as much as possible for a prolonged period of time. Giving him a place to stay and enough funding to take care of his needs out of my personal funds rather than the Centre payroll would also solve any conflict problems with his former employers that might arise."  
  
Jarod raised his chin, brushing her forehead with his beard, and looked down at her archly. "Do I know this guy?"  
  
Miss Parker shook her head and kissed his chest. "Nope. But he's the Yakuza assassin that I have keeping Syd and Kevin safe while I'm here. I think I'm going to want him as a family retainer, rather than a Centre employee."  
  
"Yakuza?" Jarod's hand found the side of her head and turned it to face him. "I thought we were going to cut all ties with them?"  
  
"We have," she assured him with a placid look on her face. "He came to ME, looking for sanctuary FROM the Yakuza. I figured since he was the one who killed Raines, he at least deserved a chance."  
  
OK, Jarod thought, killing Raines was a definite mark in the man's favor. Still... "What did he do to get them after him?" he asked sharply. "Will it put Sydney or any of you in any danger?"  
  
She shook her head at him. "I don't think so. From what he said, he began to have doubts about the wisdom of the orders he was receiving - and just walked away from an assignment. You just don't do that when you're part of the Yakuza." She sighed. "But if push comes to pull, I'll pull strings and see if I can't talk his boss into selling his services to me permanently. I'll make it a sweet enough deal..."  
  
That did make Jarod recoil. "This is a human being we're talking about, Missy..."  
  
"Calm down!" she patted him on the stomach. "I know that! But Yakuza etiquette would require me to put the deal in those terms." She snuggled. "You forget, I'm more familiar with that particular facet of Japanese culture than you are."  
  
The arm around her shoulder tightened possessively. "I swear, there are times..." At that moment, the alarm began screaming again. Jarod put up a slightly more controlled hand this time and turned the alarm off. "Our nine minutes are up."  
  
"Tell me you just hit the snooze again."  
  
"Up and at 'em, Tiger." Jarod squeezed her shoulders one last time and then rolled away from her to a sitting position. "I'll take first dibs on the bathroom - that means that you'll have access to it all you want for packing purposes and all that."  
  
Miss Parker groaned in complaint as she rolled to her side of the bed and sat up. "Yeah, I suppose I'd better go check up on what the munchkins are getting into in your kitchen."  
  
Jarod shot her a concerned look. "You know, it HAS been awfully quiet from that end of the house..."  
  
She stared back at him in consternation and then grabbed her robe on the way out the door, with Jarod one step behind her.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"Deb?"  
  
Miss Parker opened the bedroom door a little wider so she could peek through. Deb was still buried in the covers, only the lump in the bed showing that she was still there. She moved quietly to the side of the bed and then sat down where she could see just the ends of mussed blonde hair over the top of the bedspread. "Come on, Deb, it's time to get up."  
  
There was a low moan from beneath the covers, and then the bedspread was pulled down slowly from within to expose very sleepy-looking blue eyes. "Already?"  
  
"Sorry, sweetheart. If you're going to take a shower before leaving, and get anything of breakfast in you, you'll need to start moving."  
  
"I'm not hungry," the girl announced in about as petulant a tone as Miss Parker had heard from her in years. "Can't you just let me sleep until it's almost time to go?"  
  
Miss Parker smoothed some of the straggling hair away from the young woman's face. "Talk to me, Deb. What's going on here?"  
  
"Nothing!" The blonde brows had pulled together in pique. "I'm just tired... Yesterday was a long, hard day."  
  
"Nightmares?"  
  
That brought the blue eyes open and looking sharply up into Miss Parker's face. "What do you mean?"  
  
The older woman shook her head in amazement. "Come on, Deb. I'm not blind, and I'm not deaf. And besides, Miss Jackson told me that you said you had been having..."  
  
"I told her what she wanted to hear - just to get her to stop asking me all those stupid questions," Deb insisted, her pique becoming open frustration. "Why is it that everybody wants me to tell them all about my nightmares, or what I'm thinking, or how I'm feeling..."  
  
"We're concerned about you," Miss Parker replied, stung by the accusatory tone. "And those of us who know all of what you've been through KNOW that you aren't just going to be able to get over it in a day or two or three. We just want to help..."  
  
"I don't WANT anybody's help!" Deb exploded, finally sitting straight up in bed. "Don't you get it? I just want to forget that this past week ever happened and get on with my life..."  
  
"Sweetheart..." Miss Parker reached out to her again.  
  
Deb swatted the hands away roughly. "Don't 'sweetheart' me. Just... leave me alone."  
  
"Missy..." Jarod's voice made Miss Parker look back at him. Her face was wounded, just as he'd feared it would be. He'd been halfway expecting Deb's explosion sooner or later, and had hoped to interfere before Missy had gotten in the line of fire and been singed. "Let me..."  
  
"Yes, 'Missy,' leave everything to Uncle Jarod the Shrink," Deb mocked caustically.  
  
Jarod moved to next to Miss Parker and bend over her to help her rise from the bed. His arm about her was warm and comforting, and he kissed her cheek even as he escorted her to the door. "Go on. Take your shower now. I'll handle things here for a bit."  
  
Miss Parker leaned into him a little, then walked the rest of the way down the hallway to their bedroom to make use of the private bath. The sudden virulence from Deb had come at her quite unexpectedly - and it hurt. She shook her head, wondering what she had done wrong or to deserve Deb flying at her in that manner.   
  
Jarod deliberately left the door open and then moved back closer to Deb, who then flinched. "What?" she demanded defensively.  
  
"Do you think that's going to accomplish anything?"  
  
She nervously pulled the covers up and shrank back against the headboard. "I don't know what you're talking about."  
  
"You know very well what I'm talking about. Do you think pushing people away when they show they care about you will make you feel better?"  
  
Deb pouted. "Everybody's been HOVERING so much lately, nobody will give me any space..."  
  
"Indeed." Jarod sounded thoroughly unconvinced, and parked himself at the very foot of the bed so as not to appear any more intimidating physically than necessary. "That's why nobody stopped you when you announced you were tired last night - why you were finally able to walk in here on your own power rather than have Sam carry you - right?"   
  
"OK. Fine. You gave me some space," she admitted very reluctantly. "Happy?"  
  
"Are you?"   
  
She shot him a surprised glare. "God, if I'd wanted more therapy, I'd have stayed in Victorville!"  
  
Jarod shrugged. "Too bad. Might as well get used to it - you know damned good and well that your grandfather isn't going to put up with your new attitude much more than I am. I can imagine that the fireworks from those fights are going to be rather spectacular - although I'd caution you not to ever get him REALLY mad at you. Trust me, you don't EVER..."  
  
"If Grandpa's going to be like the rest of you, constantly hovering over me with ooey-gooey 'how are you, Deb?' or answering questions with questions..."  
  
Jarod's eyes snapped, but he refrained from responding. Maybe a dose of Sydney the Inquisitor was what it would take, he decided stoically. "OK, so you've decided you're going to be mad at anybody who expresses the least amount of care or concern. From what I understand, Kevin has been beside himself with worry about you - I suppose you're going to be a total bitch with him too. You're going to want to push him away too, right?"  
  
She opened her mouth to protest, but Jarod just kept talking. "What about your Dad? He's been cooped up in a hospital, not even able to think about coming to your help when you were found. He's going to want to know how his little girl is fairing - are you going to cut him off and push him away too? Will answering his questions be an intrusion into your privacy that sets you off into a tirade? Isn't he allowed to care anymore?"  
  
Deb closed her eyes. She didn't want to hear this - but her adopted uncle simply wouldn't stop. "Then there's Davy. I'm betting that once you get home to Sydney's you'll do your damnedest to push him away the hardest - and you know why? Not only because you do NOT want him asking you if you're OK and showing that he cares, but because he's the one person who will remind you of what happened. Every time you look at Davy, you'll feel that animal's hands on you..."  
  
"Stop it..." Deb's voice was shaky, and tears were finally swimming. "Stop it..."  
  
"YOU stop it, Deb Broots," Jarod fired back at her. "Stop pretending that everything IS OK with you - because everybody around you can tell very easily that it ISN'T."  
  
She was crying openly now, and Jarod moved very slowly and carefully up so that he could give her a shoulder to lean on. After a moment's hesitation, Deb settled her cheek on his shoulder, looking away from him. "I just want everything to be the way it was..."  
  
"I know, I know," Jarod soothed, holding her very carefully and gently. "But that isn't going to happen, Deb - and the more miserable you make those around you because you're hurting, the more miserable YOU'RE going to be because that will make things just that much more different than it was."  
  
"What am I going to do, Uncle Jarod?" she whimpered miserably. "I can't live like this..."  
  
"It won't be like this forever, sweetheart. You have to be patient, and let Grandpa Sydney help you out when your feelings get to be too much for you to handle alone - or me, when I get back."  
  
"But Grandpa... He'll think..."  
  
Jarod shook his head. "No he won't. He loves you - you know that - and he'll do just about anything in his power to help you get through this." He softened his voice. "You're the apple of his eye, and one of the best things that ever happened to him."  
  
"What if I get mad?"  
  
He set her back so that he could look into her face. "You need to know that it's OK to get mad, Deb - but the important thing is that if you ARE going to get mad, get mad at the right thing or person. You were mad before, with Miss Parker, right?" She nodded unhappily. "Were you mad at her specifically?"   
  
That made the girl stop and think. "No..." she admitted slowly.  
  
"What WERE you mad at?"  
  
The blue eyes looked up into his bleakly. "The way she treats me."  
  
"And what is it about the way she treats you that makes you mad?"  
  
She thought for a moment about how to put her emotion into words, and then a little longer debating the safety of actually telling him the truth. Then, deciding at this point that she had little to lose and wouldn't be around him that much longer anyway, she blurted out, "She treats me as if I were a poor little molested girl - so fragile, so helpless, so pathetic..."  
  
"Alright," Jarod soothed, feeling as if she was finally making some progress. "What is it that you want her to do differently?"  
  
"Not ask me all the time if I'm OK," she answered immediately and firmly.  
  
"Fine. What else?"  
  
Deb looked up into her uncle's face with an expression of wonder in her eyes. "Let me ask for help."  
  
Jarod nodded. "That one's a two-way street, you know. I'd imagine she'd find it easier to wait for you to ask for help if she knew you actually WOULD ask when you need the help." His dark eyes peered directly into hers. "WILL you ask for help if you need it - even if it makes you feel uncomfortable?"  
  
"I can do for myself," she retorted stubbornly.  
  
"Deb," his tone became a warning. "You give a little to get a little here. And while you might be able to do for yourself more than you've been allowed lately, your foot still needs a little babying. You were limping pretty badly last night when I helped you down the hall, even though I understand you had Sam carrying you everywhere. So..."  
  
She sighed deeply. "OK, OK, I'll ask for help when it really starts to hurt - if I know that she'll WAIT for me to ask, not just insist."  
  
"You two will have to negotiate boundaries on that one, but I think you could come to a reasonable compromise. Anything else?"  
  
Deb stared at him while she thought for a moment and then shook her head. He'd defused so much of what had been keeping her upset for days with a little straight talk. "Do you think she'll agree?"  
  
"Depends," he said frankly. "You owe her a pretty big apology for your antics a little while ago."  
  
Deb's face dropped. He was right, and she knew it. "I know."  
  
"If I keep Davy and Ginger out of your path for a little while, will you go make things right with her - and talk to her about why you got angry?"  
  
"She's probably mad at me now..." she mumbled, seeing for the first time how her own behavior had only managed to make things worse.  
  
"I'll talk to her," Jarod promised, "if you will."  
  
"OK."  
  
"Atta-girl. Now..." he said, rising, "time to get up and come have some breakfast. Davy's already had his turn at the bathroom, so you can shower then eat, or eat first and then shower."  
  
Deb threw back the covers, exposing the fact that she'd fallen asleep in her traveling clothes. "I think I'll shower first, then eat," she said quietly. "I'm going to have to figure out what I'm going to say..."  
  
"There you go," Jarod commented, holding a hand out to her to help her to her feet.  
  
Deb willingly put her hand in her uncle's. "Thanks, Uncle Jarod."  
  
The tall Pretender bent and dropped a kiss on her forehead. "Anytime, Deb."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Davy sat next to his new little sister on the carpet just inside the balcony doors, watching the seagulls swooping and fluttering over something caught in the rocks of the tide pool below. It was beautiful here - the ocean here was so different from the one close to his home, and yet, so similar. He didn't want to leave at all.  
  
So much was here that he'd grown to love or enjoy - the view from his Daddy's living room, the way Uncle Nathan and Uncle Ethan picked on him, having his Daddy back again, and his sister. He glanced over at her, saw her gazing at him with a smile on her face, and smiled back. She cuddled her bandaged teddy bear closer and turned with a sigh to sit and watch the waves again.  
  
He'd always wanted a little brother or sister - but he'd never thought he'd ever have anything resembling a REAL family until just this past summer. Now he had a Daddy AND a sister - but he was going to be leaving soon, and leaving them both behind.  
  
Ginger may not have uttered a word to him yet, but they had enjoyed hours' worth of fun and laughter the previous night. Using their fingers like spider legs, they had had mock battles up the side of the bed where he had spread an extra set of blankets like a sleeping bag. When he'd gotten tired of reaching up, he'd climbed up onto the bed with her, and they'd played until they both were droopy-eyed, whereupon he had pulled his extra blanket up onto the bed and snuggled down next to Ginger to sleep.  
  
"I wish you could come with us," he told her quietly. "You'd like Grandpa and Kevin and Sam. We have a park right across the street from Grandpa's and Kevin would take us over there anytime we wanted - we could play on the swings, or the slides..."   
  
Ginger's eyes had grown large. Suddenly it was registering - she was losing the best friend she'd ever had. The Boy hadn't cared that she didn't want to talk - he'd played games that didn't need words with her and not tried to push her around like the other kids did. He even loved to sit and watch the water with her - something the Other Boy couldn't be bothered with. For the first time, she had someone close to her age to look up to - and now he was leaving?  
  
Davy saw those huge, dark eyes begin to fill with tears. "Don't cry," he comforted, putting his arm around his little sister awkwardly. "Mommy said that as soon as Daddy has adopted you for real, you can come back and be with us forever and ever - and we can be a real family."   
  
Ginger blinked, and a huge tear dropped to her cheek. This was even worse than being swept up and taken away from familiar surroundings to be placed with yet another bunch of strangers - or an empty room all alone. She felt Davy pat her shoulder, but the gesture gave her no comfort. She felt a sudden stab of terror. Was she going to lose Him too?  
  
She leapt to her feet and ran back down the hallway toward His - Their - bedroom and skidded to a stop. There was an open suitcase on the bed - and her worst fears were confirmed. Jarod only barely turned from having tied his tie when he had little arms wrapped tightly around his legs and a grief-stricken child sobbing her heart out into his pantleg.  
  
"Hey there!" Jarod stooped to haul his little girl up into his arms and cuddle her closely, and her thin arms wound around his neck tightly and clung. He looked down as Davy peeked around the corner of the door. "What happened?"  
  
Davy shuffled into the room. "I think... I was talking about how I wished she could come along with us today, and..." He looked up into his father's face. "I don't think she'd figured out that we were leaving until just then..."  
  
"Ah!" Jarod nodded and turned his attention to his little girl. "You're going to miss Davy, aren't you?" She nodded vehemently, then clung tighter. "What about Mommy? Are you going to miss her too?"   
  
There was a hitch in the sobs, and Ginger pulled herself back a little so she could look into His face. Why would she miss Her if... The large dark eyes widened again. Oh.  
  
"What? Did you think that I was leaving?" Jarod asked gently. She nodded in teary relief and then laid her head on his shoulder again. "I wouldn't do that to you, Sprite. It's Mommy and Davy who are going home. You're staying here with me."  
  
"I'm sorry, Daddy," Davy said mournfully. "I didn't mean to..."  
  
"Hush," Jarod soothed his son and extended a free arm out to the boy, who quickly came over and wrapped his arms around his father's waist. "You didn't do anything wrong." He backed up just enough so that he could sit on the bed. "C'mon," he invited Davy gently. "Group hug."  
  
Davy eagerly clambered up onto the bed and onto his father's lap. Jarod held his children to him tightly, kissing first one dark head and then the other.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"Miss Parker?" Deb's voice was small and unsure as she called for the attention of the tall brunette drinking coffee and staring out the kitchen window.   
  
Miss Parker glanced at Deb and then gave Sam, who was sitting at the kitchen table drinking his own coffee, a knowing look. "I'll let you two ladies talk by yourselves," the ex-sweeper said in quick agreement as he rose and then made tracks for the living room. "'Scuse me, Short Stuff," he said, carefully pushing past Deb, who clung to the doorjamb.  
  
Only then did wary grey eyes turn to look more directly at the girl in the doorway. "Yes?"  
  
Deb cringed inside. She hadn't heard that particular tone of voice from Miss Parker since she had first met the woman years ago - it was frosty and defensive. She had told Jarod in the heat of her anger that she had wanted space from Miss Parker - well, this was Miss Parker giving her exactly what she'd wanted. She'd hurt someone who had been like a mother to her for years - and if she didn't do something quickly, space was all she would be getting from now on. Suddenly the hovering didn't seem quite so objectionable.  
  
"I'm sorry," she said before she could give herself a reason to back away. "I didn't mean it."  
  
"That's not how it sounded." Miss Parker said in a guarded voice.  
  
"I know." Deb was miserable. How could she have done this? Miss Parker had even stayed in California, waiting for her to be released from the hospital, rather than go home and take care of business. "I wasn't thinking, and I'm sorry." She couldn't meet that guarded grey gaze any longer. "I know you care, and you want to help. It's just... I don't know what I need right now - and it's making me do stupid things. Please..."  
  
"Please what?" Miss Parker didn't feel like making this any easier on the girl at the moment. There were reasonable limits to which Deb's haywire emotions could be allowed to fly - limits which ended where they impacted the feelings of others around her - and the young woman needed to realize this. Once they got back to Delaware, she was going to be too busy with her Centre obligations to have Deb's emotional distress to trip over constantly - things were still precarious enough that any distraction could cause major problems.   
  
Deb seriously contemplated making a mad dash back to the bed she'd slept in - or begging Uncle Jarod if he would let her stay here for a while. She wilted, not knowing what it was that she was asking for. All during the shower, all she could think of to say was that she was sorry - she had never considered that the apology wouldn't be enough this time. With a sigh of defeat, she started to leave. She didn't have the strength to face this now.  
  
Miss Parker blinked in surprise. After Jarod had spoken to her and explained how the situation in the bedroom had been resolved, she hadn't expected that Deb would be so unable to handle a good scolding. "Deb," she called out, setting the coffee on the counter. "Other people have feelings too. You can't just lash out like that and not expect consequences."  
  
"I know - I'm sorry." Deb didn't turn around. Her foot hurt, and Miss Parker's rejection felt like a kick in the stomach. "I don't know what else to say." She took a limping step in the direction of the hallway. She was fairly sure she was going to be sick - and she didn't know if she was going to make it to the bathroom on time.  
  
"I'm sorry too," Miss Parker said from behind her, this time in a much more approachable tone. She put out a hand and caught at Deb's hand before she could get much further away and pulled the girl to a stop. "See how easy it is to hurt someone when you're angry?" Deb didn't answer, but tried to pull away. "Deb!" She pulled hard enough that the girl turned and showed that her face was almost transparently pale. "God, Deb! What's wrong?"  
  
"I think..." Deb put her fingers to her lips, "I think I'm going to be sick..."  
  
With Miss Parker's arm suddenly giving sturdy support, Deb found herself turned around and pulled into the kitchen and over to the sink. She managed to keep her stomach from rebelling completely until she was over the porcelain, and then bent to heave sour stomach juices into the sink. She leaned hard into the hand at her forehead that kept wayward tendrils of hair from being soiled, grateful for the support. She heaved several more times without bringing up anything more from her empty stomach, each ragged retch pulling her closer to actually crying until she was quivering inside and out. Miss Parker reached out and grabbed a paper towel and dampened it, then carefully wiped her face and chin before pulling her close.  
  
"I'm here," she said softly and closed her eyes. She had meant to shake Deb up, not make her sick. "I'm here, sweetheart." The swiftness with which Deb's emotions were cycling from one extreme to the other was worrisome. She was going to have to have a long talk with Sydney when they got home, so that she could know better how to respond to what was going to be a long, hard journey for all of them. She didn't need to be causing this kind of reaction more than once!  
  
Deb had started to lean. "I'm so sorry..."  
  
"Hush." Miss Parker rocked her gently back and forth. "I know, Debbie. It's OK."  
  
Deb wrapped her arms around Miss Parker and held on tightly, and slowly her trembling began to abate. She didn't want to push anybody away anymore - right now she needed somebody to actually be close enough to lean on and keep reminding her that life would be OK again eventually. The sound of the old diminutive was like a warm blanket around her heart. She hadn't been 'Debbie' for anybody for a very long time - at her own instigation. 'Deb' had sounded so much more grown-up. She didn't want to be 'Deb' anymore...  
  
Miss Parker felt the young woman slowly calm, and finally smoothed her hair back away from her face and pushed her away a little bit. "Let me get you some water to rinse your mouth with," she told her gently, "OK?" Deb nodded mutely and watched as a glass was retrieved, filled with tepid water and then handed to her. "Don't swallow," Miss Parker cautioned as the young woman sipped and then spat. Once her mouth was clean, she set the glass on the counter.  
  
"Come sit down," Miss Parker insisted softly, pulling her toward one of the kitchen chairs and then pushing her to sit down. She pulled out another chair and sat down too, very close.   
  
"I'm sorry I hurt you," Deb whimpered miserably.  
  
"I know you are, sweetheart. And I'm sorry I upset you so badly." Miss Parker let her fingers brush more of the long blonde strands away from eyes. "Jarod told me that you wanted to discuss some boundaries. I think maybe this would be a good time to do that."  
  
"You're not mad?" The voice was very small and very frightened.  
  
"No, Deb, I'm not mad. Not anymore."  
  
The tears just wouldn't stop. Deb tried hard to regain some control, but just couldn't. Miss Parker sighed and pulled her back into a close embrace. Maybe right now WASN'T the time for negotiations - maybe right now she just needed to provide a shoulder and some comfort. Sydney had said that some assault victims tended to have violent mood swings, even into hysterics. Deb needed stability around her right now to give her careening emotions some sort of anchor.  
  
Setting boundaries could wait.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
From the kitchen door, a set of very large, dark eyes watched the two women with wide-eyed astonishment. There had been no raised voices, but the strange lady was crying, and She was taking care of her. She wasn't mad, or talking harshly, She was just holding on and letting the strange lady cry on Her shoulder - cuddling her like He did when she was scared or sad. Ginger was confused. She wasn't like any of the other 'mommies' she'd ever had - and every time she thought she had seen all the ways in which She was different, She found some new way to confound her yet again. Thin arms cuddled a bandaged teddy bear just a little closer and toyed with the bandage thoughtfully.  
  
Miss Parker looked up and saw that she had a small and very wary spectator. "Go get Daddy, please," she mouthed at the girl silently. Ginger's eyes widened, and she nodded before she vanished. Miss Parker wondered what her adoptive daughter-to-be was making of this topsy-turvy morning, then turned her attention back to her surrogate daughter.   
  
Ginger trotted obediently to His bedroom again, where He was talking with The Boy. She waved her hand after catching his eye, gesturing for him to follow her.  
  
Jarod frowned slightly. "What is it?"  
  
Ginger pulled her fingers down her face as if they were tears, and Jarod was already nodding. "OK. You two kids stay with Sam in the living room for a bit, OK?"  
  
Before she knew it, The Boy had her hand in his and was dragging her out into the living room, where that huge man was standing and sipping his hot drink while looking out over the ocean, and dragging her up close to him! "Hey there, Sam," Davy greeted his old friend.  
  
"Hey there, Squirt," Sam smiled back, trying with his smile to make himself as unthreatening as possible to a very skittish little girl trying to drag her hand out of her big brother's grasp. "You ready to go home now?"  
  
"Yeah, kinda..." Davy said truthfully. "I'm gonna miss Daddy and Grandma Maggie and Sammy, though... And my new sister."  
  
"Yeah," the big man breathed out in sympathy. "Leaving folks we love behind kinda sucks sometimes." The sparkling eyes turned to the tiny girl. "Are you gonna miss your big brother too?"  
  
Ginger froze. The Man was talking to her! She tipped her head to look way up in the air and turned petrified eyes to him, trying to understand the gentle humor in his gaze. How could someone so big and scary not roar with a big voice to scare all the kids? But The Man's voice was soft, like His, almost.   
  
Sam very slowly dropped into a squat so that he wasn't so very tall to a tiny child. "You don't have to be afraid of me, Precious," he soothed at her in as gentle a voice as he knew how. "I'm a friend of your Daddy's and Mommy's - and that makes me your friend too. My name's Sam." He knew better than to put out his hand or make any overt gesture toward her at this point; he just squatted there, just a little taller than her eye level.  
  
Ginger would have huddled back against The Boy, but he had left her side to wrap an arm around The Man's neck. "He gives the best tips, Ginger - really." Davy turned pleading eyes to his old friend. "Please?"  
  
Sam's big hand came up and ruffled Davy's hair. "Not this time, Squirt. We don't want to scare your little sister anymore than she already is, now, do we?" He looked back over at the little girl with her huge, dark eyes. "Time enough for tips when we all feel more comfortable with each other."  
  
Davy looked over at his new little sister with some surprise. "You're afraid of Sam?" he asked incredulously. "Sam's just like a great big teddy bear..."  
  
Sam had to quash the chuckle when he saw the open expression of frank skepticism come over the girl's face. He could see that only her brother's proximity had made being dragged so close even thinkable. "I don't look much like a big teddy bear, do I?" he asked the child in gentle amusement.   
  
Taking his question entirely seriously, Ginger shook her head slowly. "Have you been around other big guys like me before?" he asked then, and watched as she thought for a moment before nodding her head with a very wary expression in her eyes that made him wonder just who it was that had frightened her so badly. "But I'm not so big right now," he pointed out, with an index finger showing her that they were almost eye to eye. "Am I so scary when I'm down here?"  
  
Ginger tipped her head and looked at The Man. She had to admit that his getting down and talking to her on her level was far less scary. Still, she could remember things that could happen when Big Men were allowed to get too close. Somberly she nodded and then watched his face fall in disappointment.  
  
"Maybe as you get to know me better," he said gently, "you'll learn that I'm not going to hurt you at all. In fact," he rose slowly so that he was back to his full height, "when you finally come home to be with Davy and your Mom again, you'll find out that I'm around more to keep you safe. That's what I do," he said very frankly, looking deep into those dark pools of absorbent intelligence. "I keep people safe - especially your family."  
  
The doorbell rang, and Davy darted away to answer it, leaving Ginger with Sam. The ex-sweeper could see that she was startled to be so easily abandoned, but then merely sipped at his coffee while watching her from the corner of his eye. The child was studying him closely, as if debating whether or not Davy's endorsement of his trustworthiness could be trusted. "It's OK, Precious," he told her finally. "Why don't you go see who's at the door?"  
  
Ginger already knew, but took advantage of the obvious permission to leave to back away and turn to trot in the direction of her Grandma Maggie's voice. She knew she could trust Grandma...  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"You know, for so many years, I hoped that I'd never see your face again," Maggie told Miss Parker as they sat at the kitchen table together for the last time for a while. "Now, I'm finding that I'm hoping that I get to see your face again soon. I don't think I've ever seen my son so happy as he is when you're around."  
  
"I'm hoping that you'll consider coming back to Delaware to visit - often," Miss Parker replied with the same tone of wistfulness. "Especially once Jarod and I have a date set."  
  
"Do you have any idea?"  
  
She chuckled. "Not yet. He still needs to finish up his business here - get the pink slip on Ginger - and then settle into his new position at the Centre. But..." she put out a hand across the table at the woman, "you can be sure that it won't be long after that. Probably within the next three months or so."  
  
"Tell me," Margaret asked plaintively, "what is Davy's birthday?"  
  
"November fourteenth," Miss Parker answered. "What about yours?"  
  
"July second." Margaret chuckled. "We really should be writing this stuff down, you know..."  
  
"I know." Grey eyes twinkled into the brilliant blue ones. "I'll get all the dates from either Jarod or Ethan - I'm assuming they DO know them?"  
  
Margaret laughed out loud at that. "Spoken like someone with plenty of experience with the male proclivity to forgetfulness. Charles couldn't remember a date if I paid him - but his sons... They have no excuse."  
  
Miss Parker joined the laughter. "My God, there IS a down-side to being a certified genius!" The laughter stopped, but the humor remained. "So I'll do an exchange of important dates by email - Jarod or Ethan can get you a copy."  
  
"That sounds good." Margaret tipped her head. "How is your little friend doing - the one you waited around for?"  
  
"She's having her moments," Miss Parker commented cryptically. "This whole situation has been very hard on her."  
  
"I would imagine her family is anxious to have her back again."  
  
"Her father is still in the hospital after the Centre fell on him, literally and figuratively. She'd been staying with Sydney until this happened."  
  
"Sydney." Margaret's tone grew just a bit distant. "You know I remember meeting someone who looked just like him was when a team of Centre psychiatrists came to the preschool that Jarod was attending. That man was the one who told me that Jarod was a very special child." She fell silent, her mouth falling closed in a tight line. "I've often wondered if he knew then - and was part of the reason..."  
  
"Maggie, Sydney was told that you and your husband were killed," Miss Parker felt the push to defend her surrogate father. "His understanding when he became Jarod's mentor was that Jarod was an orphan with no surviving family. The man you met - the man who did the initial intake on Jarod into the Centre - was Sydney's twin brother, Jacob. Jacob was the one who was at the preschool."  
  
"So Sydney never did know..."  
  
Miss Parker shook her head. "I remember the day he found out - he was horror-struck at what he'd become a part of."  
  
"Then why," Maggie just had to know, "did he agree to become a part of the search team, if he knew that Jarod had been taken - stolen?"  
  
"He didn't find that out until AFTER he had become a part of the search team - none of us knew at first." Miss Parker's voice grew stony. "None of us knew anything at first about ANYthing. I didn't know anything about my mother's death..." She shook herself of the memories of bad old times. "It was Jarod who, in the process of trying to find out who he was and where his family had gone, started uncovering things. He was the one that uncovered he lies surrounding my mother's suicide that wasn't. He found out about why the woman Sydney loved had left - and taken with her a son that Sydney then never knew existed. Every time he turned around, he'd found out something more about the way the Centre would stoop as low as it needed to blackmail or threaten people to force them to do what was wanted."  
  
"But after..."  
  
Miss Parker looked at her future mother-in-law with understanding. "You know how the Centre was, Maggie. By the time we were starting to find out things, it had become too dangerous for us to start refusing because of principles. Either that or..." Miss Parker's eyes grew distant and angry, "...we were promised things that the Centre never intended to deliver in the first place. We... I... was lied to in order to convince me to keep on, and when it started to look like I was getting ready to quit, they were willing to even kill..." Oh, Tommy, she thought with a sudden stab of sadness.  
  
That took Margaret aback. She knew the Centre had been evil - but she'd never considered that some of the people she'd been demonizing all these years might have been as much victimized as she had been. Suddenly some of the things that Jarod had told her a long time ago started to make sense - and even more of his distress at her unwillingness to accept those people as those he cared about became understandable as well. But she was still curious. "What about Sydney?"  
  
"His compliance with the Centre agenda had been the result of blackmail for years. The Centre convinced him that he'd been responsible for the car accident that put his brother Jacob into a coma. Then, a few years later, they convinced him he was responsible for the death of a co-worker in yet another car accident, and then created a story that the two of them had been having an affair at the time of the accident - and that Sydney had been drinking. If he didn't do as they said, they were willing to take Jarod away from him and get him thrown into jail." Miss Parker's gaze was direct and very frank. "Sydney cared about Jarod - a lot. AND he had an idea of what would happen to him if Raines..."  
  
"Raines!" Margaret's expression grew downright furious at the mention of the name. "That bastard..."  
  
"He was more than that," Miss Parker said sourly. "He was a monster. If he'd gotten his hands on Jarod... Well... You saw the shape Ethan was in..."  
  
"God!"  
  
"That's something I've been meaning to say to you." Miss Parker leaned across the table and put her hand on Margaret's arm. "Thank you for all you did for my brother. I'm glad..." She swallowed hard. "I'm glad you were willing to overlook how he came into the world and become his family anyway. He needed a loving family to help him - I'm glad he had yours..."  
  
Margaret gazed gently into the face that reminded her so much of a friend she had known so many years ago and thought about the face of the man that she'd always considered the thief of her son's affections. While Jarod's treatment at the Centre had been anything but humane, Sydney HAD instilled a firm set of ethics in his protégé with which both she and Charles had agreed. She couldn't even begin to imagine what shape Jarod would have been in if Raines had wrested authority from Sydney.  
  
She couldn't demonize these people anymore. Not when it was obvious that they were as fond of Jarod as he was of them.  
  
"We've come a long ways, haven't we?" she asked, putting her hand over Miss Parker's.  
  
"Yeah." Parker smiled back. "We have, haven't we?"  
  
"I'm glad you came." Margaret thought she would never hear herself say those words, but now she meant them with all her heart. "I'm going to miss you."  
  
The simple tone was almost more than Miss Parker was expecting. "Me too," she agreed in a small voice, clinging to the older woman's arm. "Me too."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"I'm going to miss you, Grandma," Davy said sorrowfully, wrapping his arms around Margaret's waist.  
  
"I'm going to miss you too, Davy," Margaret whispered into the top of her grandson's head. "You're so grown up already - I'm afraid that the next time I see you, you'll be taller than me."  
  
"Grandma..." Davy's tone clearly told her that he was certain that she was pulling his leg. "You're going to come back to Delaware for the wedding, aren't you?"  
  
Margaret's gaze touched her future daughter-in-law's. "Oh, you never know. I might even come over before then."  
  
Miss Parker leaned into her half-brother's hug. "I've missed you so. I'm glad..."  
  
"I'm glad too, Missy," Ethan said. "I knew that we'd see each other again someday - I'm glad that day finally came." He squeezed her tightly. "You take good care of yourself now..."  
  
"I will..." she answered, squeezing him back. "I'll see you at the wedding."  
  
"With bells on..." he chuckled at her.  
  
"I'd like to see that..." she chuckled back at him and then let him go so that he could say goodbye to his nephew. For her part, she turned to the little girl who still insisted on maintaining her distance from any larger group of people, cuddling her teddy bear close like a shield. She walked over to Ginger slowly and knelt in front of her.  
  
"You know," she said softly, reaching out and touching the bandage that was still carefully wrapped around the bear's arm, "I think that his arm is pretty well healed. Do you want to help me check?"  
  
Ginger's dark eyes studied her for a moment, and the she offered up her bear to Her for inspection. She took the bear into Her hands with great care and checked the shoulder where the dismembered arm had been reattached. Ginger's eyes flitted in concern back and forth from her beloved toy to Her face.  
  
"I think we can take the bandage off now," Miss Parker announced with a gentle smile. "Here - why don't you hold him, and I'll take the bandage off." She handed the bear back to the little girl, who held him loosely and let Miss Parker's slim fingers untie the knot that had held the arm in a sling and then gently removed the handkerchief altogether. "How is he doing?" she asked the child, keeping a close eye on her face.  
  
Ginger looked down at her bear, and then carefully examined the seam where the arm had been reattached in much the same way that She had. Finally she looked up into Her face and gave a satisfied nod.  
  
"You take good care of him when I'm gone, won't you?" Miss Parker asked softly. Ginger's eyes grew soft and she nodded again. Miss Parker then addressed herself to the toy. "And you take care of her while I'm gone too, OK? She's an extra-special person, and I need her to have extra-special care." The grey eyes flitted to gaze into the dark ones. "He says he'll take good care of you for me. Is that OK with you?"  
  
Ginger nodded again, contentedly. She and her toy would surely take very good care of one another.  
  
Miss Parker reached out a very cautious hand and smoothed the little girl's hair. "Then I will see you later," she said, wishing she dared try to give the child a hug. Ginger's dark eyes looked into hers seriously as she nodded again. Miss Parker reminded herself briskly that she should be grateful that the little girl wasn't running away from her anymore and contented herself with smoothing back the dark hair one more time before getting to her feet. She could see that Deb had said her farewells and was already heading out to the limousine with Sam, and Davy was not far behind. Jarod had followed them out to say his good-byes outside. It was time for her to bid her love farewell for another indeterminate stretch of time...  
  
Ginger had watched the quick wash of emotions behind Her eyes as she had straightened. She knew She was leaving - and suddenly she wasn't sure that was such a good thing. Yes, that meant that she would still be here in His house with Grandma Maggie but... She looked around her. The Boy was already gone - he'd already given her a tight hug and a sloppy kiss on the side of her face. She looked back at Her again, considering. Having Her in the house had been quite an experience - She had taken care of her toy, never once raised her voice or hand... It was going to be hard to imagine the house without Her and The Boy. They had seemed like they belonged, and fitted into her life almost before she'd realized it.  
  
Miss Parker was about to follow Sam and Deb and Davy and Jarod out to the limousine when she felt a small hand insinuate itself into hers. Startled, she looked down and found herself captured by two dark pools of bottomless emotion. "What?" she asked gently.  
  
Ginger decided. She lifted her arms up to Her, asking to be picked up.   
  
Miss Parker caught her breath, and then bent and carefully lifted her soon-to-be daughter up into her arms. "Oh, Sprite," she whispered softly and very gently held the girl close to her heart. "I will miss you too, baby."  
  
Ginger wrapped her arms around Her neck and snuggled down. Yes, She was as soft and smelled almost as nice as Grandma Maggie.   
  
Miss Parker deposited one tiny kiss after another against the child's cheek as she carried her out the door with her to the side of the limousine, where Jarod was just bending down to let his son clamber inside. He straightened, caught sight of his love with their new daughter in her arms, and smiled widely at the way Ginger was snuggling and clinging. "I see you found somebody else to hug," he said softly, smoothing his little girl's hair back. "I was thinking you were taking a little longer in there than I'd thought you'd need..."  
  
"She found me," Miss Parker said, still not quite sure how it had happened. She moved into Jarod's arms and leaned her head against his shoulder in much the same way Ginger had leaned into her. "God I'll miss you two."  
  
"We'll be coming to join you as soon as we can," he assured her, a hand at her cheek lifting her face so he could bring her lips to his. "I promise."  
  
The kiss was gentle and filled with longing already. Miss Parker sighed as they parted, then looked down into the face of the child in her arms. "Go to Daddy now," she directed, and Jarod held out his arms as she shifted Ginger from her embrace to his. "You take good care of Daddy for me, won't you?" she asked with eyes bright with unshed tears.  
  
Ginger wound her arms tightly around His neck and nodded firmly. "Bye-bye Sprite." She looked into Jarod's face again. "I love you," she told him softly.  
  
"God I love you too," he replied and kissed her again. "Better go now, or you'll never see Delaware again."  
  
She kissed him one more time, then gave Ginger one more quick kiss on the cheek before ducking into the back of the limousine and closing the door. The window quickly lowered so that those left standing could see those seated within. "Take good care," she called out as the limo began to back down the drive.   
  
"I will," he called back and waved to her. Her hand came out the window in a return gesture, and even Sam behind the wheel gave the Pretender and his little girl a quick wave before aiming the large vehicle back in the direction of the freeway and the waiting airport.   
  
Jarod felt Ginger snuggle down onto the shoulder of his sports jacket with what almost sounded like a sad sigh. "They're gone," he told her. "We're going to miss them a lot, aren't we?"   
  
She nodded and sniffled. The house was going to be awfully quiet and empty without The Boy and Her. She clung to Him very tightly.  
  
"Are you going to be OK with Grandma Maggie today, or do you want to come in and help Cindy fold papers again?" He asked as he carried her back into the house.  
  
She looked over at Grandma Maggie and pointed. Folding papers had been fun at first, but it was starting to get a little old. With Grandma Maggie, she got stories read to her as well as the opportunity to play with the rest of her toys or color.   
  
"Do you mind?" Jarod asked his mother quickly, wishing he'd conferred with her first.  
  
"Not at all," Margaret held out her arms to take the little girl from her son. "I was thinking I'd make cookies today for everybody - I could use the help. I'll tell Em that I'm over here today rather than at her house, in case she wants me to watch Sammy for her for a bit."  
  
"Thanks, Mom." Jarod leaned in to drop a kiss on Margaret's cheek. "I'm going to have to run or I'll be late..."  
  
"I'll drive us in today," Ethan spoke up, moving toward the door. "It'll save gas."  
  
"Sounds good to me," Jarod agreed quickly. He really didn't feel like driving in alone if he didn't have to.  
  
"Go on, then," Margaret urged him.   
  
"Be good for Grandma," he told Ginger, dropping a kiss on her cheek as well. Ginger lifted her head and gave him a cheek-smacker back before snuggling back down with her grandmother. Jarod smiled at her and turned away with a sigh.   
  
Both Margaret and Ginger watched him reclaim his briefcase from next to the coat rack and head out the door behind Ethan after giving them both another quick wave goodbye.   
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Miss Parker stood up from her seat and moved toward the back of the jet, leaving a sleeping Deb tucked under a blue blanket from the overhead compartments and Davy staring out the window at the tops of clouds and glimpses of the ground far below. Sam had his head leaned back against the forward bulkhead, dozing - but knowing him as well as she did, she knew he wasn't asleep. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and pushed the buttons for a preprogrammed number.  
  
The phone on the other end rang twice, then was picked up in mid-ring. "This is Sydney."  
  
"Hi. We're on our way home." She sat down in a seat near the window and looked out at the white nothingness that surrounded them.  
  
Sydney's brows rose at the resigned tone in her voice. "Are you all right?" he inquired gently.  
  
"I thought it was hard when Jarod left," she mused aloud, running a finger down the thick plastic of the porthole. "I think it was even worse when I was the one who walked away this time."  
  
The old psychiatrist let the papers he'd been reading sag back to his chest as he shifted once more to get into a slightly more comfortable position. "You miss him," he stated the obvious.  
  
"More than ever now," she admitted. "Not to mention I'll miss Ethan and Emily..."  
  
"You and Jarod's sister get along well?" Sydney was surprised. When she got home, it sounded as if he'd have to get a complete run-down on what he'd genuinely feared would be nothing but heartache for her. If instead of combat, she had walked in and traded old animosities for new friendships and respect...  
  
"We're a lot alike," Miss Parker said with a soft smile. "Independent, self-sufficient, we both have children, we're both under-impressed by being surrounded by geniuses..."  
  
Sydney chuckled. "I'll bet." He paused. "How's Deb doing?"  
  
"We had a rough morning - she's sleeping right now."  
  
"Rough how?"  
  
Miss Parker sighed. "She blew up at me over nothing - and I... I guess I overestimated her ability to handle criticism..." She settled back against her seat. "She got so upset, she made herself physically ill. I felt horrible..."  
  
"I can imagine - but you can't beat yourself up too badly for this, Parker. At best, let this be a lesson in how you're going to have to be ready to just let Deb be emotional at you without letting her emotions affect you. She has some powerful emotions that will have to have the freedom to be expressed before she can begin to deal with them. This is going to be hard for all of us for a while." He watched his sore leg move past the comfort point heading toward his new movement arc setting and grimaced.   
  
"Is it going to be this way all the time now?" She was worried. "It's going to tear Broots apart if she tears into him the way she tore into me for just asking if she was OK..."  
  
"That's what triggered it?"  
  
"She said she was tired of everybody 'hovering'..."  
  
"Uh-huh." Sydney nodded. "She wants to put the entire thing behind her and forget it, and she feels nobody's cooperating with her. That's to be expected."  
  
"Well, it sure caught me by surprise, and it's going to blow her father out of the water."  
  
"I stopped by to talk to him yesterday after my therapy," Sydney told her. "He's not getting out of the hospital anytime soon. He has at least another two weeks in the complete body cast before they can even start physical therapy on him. Hopefully by the time he IS ready to come home, Deb will have worked a lot of her emotions through and will be more stable again." He gritted his teeth as his leg hit the new limit of its arc and held it for an agonized moment before easing back in the other direction. "How's Davy?"  
  
"Jarod said he'd be calling you to talk about him," she answered. "He's doing better than Deb, but he's different now - shier, tends to assume responsibility for things going wrong too easily..."  
  
"He's been through something traumatic, Parker. And he evidently took the lead in getting them out of a horrifying situation. For a little while, he became the responsible party. It might be impossible for him to completely return to being an innocent little boy again."  
  
Something Sydney said sparked a memory, and Miss Parker folded her brows. "He told me that you had been teaching him how to use his mind. What did he mean?"  
  
Sydney felt his heart skip a beat. "It was just a game we'd play when I'd watch him for you sometimes," he hedged carefully. "We'd play 'what if' games a lot - about situations that he'd sometimes bring home from school."  
  
"You weren't..." No, she couldn't imagine that her beloved foster father would have been dabbling at training another Pretender... Could he?  
  
"Parker," he soothed gently, trying to allay her fears and suspicions, "when you get home, I'll be glad to tell you everything you want to know about the mind games I've been playing with Davy. Right now, however, isn't the time." No, he wouldn't be glad to tell her anything about the training he'd needed to give Davy - NEEDED, not just begun on a whim. But the time had come for him to let her in on one of the biggest secrets he'd been holding, and then weather the storm that was sure to follow.  
  
Miss Parker closed her eyes. She had enough of a connection with him that she could feel the disquiet her questions were causing within him. "When I get home, then," she compromised. She shook herself and touched the one last question she had. "Heard anything from the Centre lately?"  
  
"Nope," Sydney shook his head, deliberately deciding that Tyler's call had been personal rather than business. "It's been a strange week, being so completely out of the loop of Centre activities after all these years."  
  
"I can imagine," she responded distractedly. What WAS it that he didn't want to tell her over the phone about Davy? "I think I'm going to see about taking a cat-nap myself now. I'll see you in about eight hours."  
  
Sydney could hear the distraction and almost distrust in her voice, and his heart sank. After all these years, to have her suspicions of him triggered again so suddenly cut him to the quick. "Have a good flight, ma petite," he told her unhappily. "It will be good to have you home again."  
  
"Later, Syd."   
  
She disconnected the call and slipped the phone into her pocket. Her fingers touched the photograph that she'd slipped into that pocket just that morning, and she pulled it out and stared at it. Staring back at her were the faces of Jarod, Davy, Ginger and herself, all smiling for Ethan's digital camera from their spot in front of Jarod's picture window in the living room. They looked so happy.  
  
She slipped the picture carefully back into her pocket and leaned her head back against the headrest of her seat before closing her eyes. Something told her that it would be a while before any of them would be that happy again.  
  
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com 


	3. Unexpected Insights

Resolutions - 3  
  
Unexpected Insights  
  
by MMB  
  
"I'll have Miss Parker review our meeting notes and then be in touch if there are any points that she feels need further discussion," Tyler said, rising to shake the hand of the Dupont R&D representative.  
  
"I'm hoping that this is the beginning of a very long and profitable relationship between our two companies," Frank McRainey shook the young Southerner's hand firmly as he rose too. He was impressed by both the resources that the Centre had to bring to this new collaborative effort and the willingness to compromise shown by the young man who had virtually closed the deal now. He bent down for his briefcase. "I look forward to hearing from you in the near future."  
  
"Count on it." Tyler's hand rode McRainey's all the way to his office doorway. "Thanks for stopping by."  
  
"You have a good day." McRainey nodded respectfully to the young Chinese receptionist and then swung into an easy and long-legged stride toward the new lobby door.  
  
"It looks as if that went well," Mei-Chiang commented quietly.  
  
Tyler smiled down at her. "If only all my appointments would go so easily," he replied with a shake of the head. "What's next?"  
  
She checked her Day-Runner and looked up. "Nothing until two-thirty, sir."  
  
"How about you let me buy you lunch then?"  
  
Her expression was surprised. "Sir?"  
  
Tyler chuckled. "It won't be much - our typical cafeteria fare - but..." He tipped his head at her continued hesitation. "What is it?"  
  
"You don't have to..." she began shyly.  
  
"I know I don't HAVE to," he replied with a smile. "But today is our last day working together like this, and I thought I'd at least treat you to lunch to say 'thank you' for your nurse-maiding me through Miss Parker's job for the past few days."  
  
Mei-Chiang began to smile. "It was my pleasure, sir."  
  
"That may be, but lunch is on me today." Tyler insisted stubbornly. "You've been indispensable to me ever since Miss Parker left me in charge - I don't think I could have handled things without you - and where I come from, one says 'thank you' when somebody's helped a person out a lot." He extended his hand over the desk. "C'mon - don't tell me you're not hungry..."  
  
"No..." His impish grin finally broke through her reticence, and she put out her hand to his and let him pull her to her feet. "Thank you, sir. I'd like that very much."  
  
"Good!" Tyler breathed a sigh of relief. She really had made his life sitting in Miss Parker's Big Chair a whole lot easier - sometimes just by being a breath of calm and tranquility when the day had been hectic. She'd kept him prompt with his appointments, supplied with ample resource material to fit whatever decision he was making as Chairman pro tem, and just generally made him appreciate the benefits of having a truly talented and efficient secretary.  
  
Mei-Chiang stifled another small breath of surprise when Mr. Tyler tucked her hand into the bend of his elbow and seemed determined to give her a proper escort down the hallway. Just the gesture was enough to embarrass her - she was only doing her job, after all. She could remember the one time that Lyle had escorted her in this manner - it had terrified her like nothing in her life ever had. By that time, she'd heard the rumors and seen several of her Chinese coworkers simply vanish, never to be heard from again. A walk arm-in-arm with Mr. Lyle had been taken as a sign of 'you're next!'  
  
Walking in a similar way with Mr. Tyler, however, was like being invited to dance with the Emperor's son himself. And if what Mr. Tyler had said was true, then this was a gesture of simple gratitude.   
  
When they got to the cafeteria, Tyler released her so that he could hand her a tray and let her go ahead of him down the line to select some food. "Now you take what you want," he urged her as he dished himself up a healthy helping of potato salad. "If you want something, take it."  
  
Even so, Mei-Chiang's choices were small portions and strictly vegetarian fare. She blushed as he pulled out his wallet and very matter-of-factly paid the cashier for the two of them and then, with a nod, let her lead the way to a table.  
  
"Are you sure that's all you wanted?" he asked, not entirely convinced that someone could manage the rest of the day on the very Spartan helpings his companion had taken.  
  
"Oh, yes, sir," she assured him, putting her napkin in her lap carefully. "This is more than I normally eat for lunch already."  
  
"Hmmm..." he settled across the table from her and pulled his own napkin out. "I know sparrows who eat more..."  
  
"They don't fly well, then, do they?" she asked with a twinkle in her eye.  
  
Tyler chuckled heartily. "I am SO tempted to try to steal you from Miss Parker," he admitted. "You don't happen to have a twin down in Clerical, do you?"  
  
Mei-Chiang looked at him sharply. "Steal me, sir?"  
  
Tyler only belated remembered the assumed fate of other Chinese clerical workers under the previous administration. "I mean that I enjoy having you assist me," he clarified quickly. "You and I make a good team. I wish I dared lure you away from Miss Parker to be MY secretary."  
  
She looked down into her plate, now thoroughly embarrassed. "I'm sorry, sir. I just..."  
  
"I've heard the stories too," he told her in a gentle voice. "I'd just forgotten. I didn't mean anything untoward."  
  
"I should have known better," she chided herself.  
  
"But I'm serious that I wish that I could have a secretary half as good as you," he continued. "You know the clerical pool - IS there another whom you think could give me the same level of help..."  
  
"Do you want Chinese secretary, sir?" she asked frankly. "Chinese secretaries are trained differently than American secretaries, I think."  
  
Tyler popped a forkful of potato salad in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "Maybe I do want a Chinese secretary," he said finally.   
  
Mei-Chiang bent to her green salad. "Then I may know of someone. She came over from Hong Kong with me when Mr. Lyle contracted our services..."  
  
Tyler looked up at her sharply. "What do you mean, 'contracted our services?' Do you mean something other than..."  
  
The young Chinese woman kept her eyes trained on her plate. "We were purchased, sir, from a mail-order company specializing in..."  
  
Tyler swallowed his half-chewed potato salad wrong and choked for a moment before bursting out, "PURCHASED? You mean, like slaves?"   
  
Mei-Chiang had nothing to say. She simply let her head nod very slightly and picked up her Styrofoam cup to sip nervously at her tea.   
  
"It isn't that way for you NOW, is it?" he demanded, outraged. Surely Miss Parker wouldn't have let something this obscene stand...  
  
"Not entirely," Mei-Chiang answered softly. "Now I work for Miss Parker, and I don't have to worry about... some of the other services I would have been expected to perform... for Mr. Lyle..."  
  
"Where do you live?" he asked tersely.  
  
"Here, at the Centre," she answered even more softly. "There is a small apartment complex near the southern perimeter where we stay..."  
  
"Are you paid - money?"  
  
She nodded. "A small stipend to augment room and board."  
  
"That's preposterous!"  
  
She looked up and into the thoroughly outraged and frustrated dark eyes of her temporary employer. "But I'm not unhappy, Mr. Tyler. I come from a very poor part of Hong Kong. My father sold me when I was 12 to a clearing company which educated me in Chinese and English so I could qualify to be sold abroad as either a mail-order bride or clerical worker... Then Mr. Lyle..."  
  
"Does Miss Parker know your situation?" he demanded even more tersely.  
  
"I honestly don't know, sir," she answered gently. "But, considering all the other fates that could have been mine, I am telling you that I'm not unhappy." Her almond eyes gazed into Tyler's with infinite tranquillity. "I have a small place of my own, a job that keeps me from starving or freezing, interesting people around me..."   
  
"And this other Chinese secretary you'd recommend - she has a history similar to yours?" Tyler's head was beginning to pound; they fought a War Between the States to prevent just such a thing, damn it!  
  
"Yes, sir."  
  
"What's her name?"  
  
"Ping Xing-Li."  
  
"I want you to make the necessary arrangement to have her in my office - my regular office, not this one - bright and early tomorrow morning." Tyler wielded his knife against his slice of beef roast angrily. "And I'll be talking to Miss Parker about your situation - I'll be damned if I'll just sit by and let you continue to work for us as an indentured servant. You're too damned good at what you do to be treated in that manner."  
  
"I'll lose my job, sir?" Mei-Chiang looked up at him in consternation.  
  
"Absolutely not - not if I have anything to say about it," he assured her firmly. "I just want to make sure you're working here and earning a reasonable salary for the kind and quality of work you do. And that you can choose to live here on the Centre grounds OR find a different place in Blue Cove or Dover if you wanted." He reached out and patted her hand. "Relax. I'm going to make it my business to improve your lot around here, Mei-Chiang, not ruin anything for you."  
  
"You don't have to..."  
  
"I know, I know," he smiled finally. "I don't HAVE to. But I want to - and when Miss Parker finds out what's been going on, I'm sure she'll want to too."  
  
And by God, I'll make sure she wants to, Tyler promised himself.   
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Dr. Mitchell?"  
  
"Who's asking?"  
  
"My name's Stiller. I'm a colonel in the Air Force. I was wondering..."  
  
"I know who you are, sir," the scientist told the voice on the telephone curtly. "You were the military liaison on Veracity. I don't work on that project anymore." She made sure that the little red light on her telephone set indicated that the conversation was being taped.  
  
Stiller smiled. "I realize that you don't. But I was just wondering..."  
  
"You know, Miss Parker told us that we might be getting calls from you folks..."  
  
The military man's smile evaporated. "She did, did she?"  
  
"Yes, sir. She said that we might receive direct pressure from the military to put some of the projects we'd been working on back into the hopper, even though the Centre no longer wants any part of them."  
  
"How do you feel about that - having your project just terminated like that and be summarily assigned to something else completely different?"  
  
Dr. Lauren Mitchell smiled. "Actually," she told him frankly, "I'm glad to see Veracity finished and out of my hands. The very concept was dangerous past all standards of measure."  
  
Stiller's face flushed. He'd been told Mitchell was one of the most approachable of the Centre team of scientists. He'd been hoping for an easy agreement. "What if I could make restarting the project worth your while?"  
  
Mitchell looked down to the red indicator light. She was glad she was taping this. "Worth my while in what way, Colonel?"  
  
"Well," Stiller's face smoothed. Maybe he'd misjudged the woman's tone at first. "For one thing, we can make a rather sizeable positive adjustment to your personal checking account once we receive proof that the project is back in the works..."  
  
"I can't just restart Veracity in my lab, Colonel - my staff would know that something was going on."  
  
"There are plenty of unused labs at the Centre now, aren't there?" Stiller asked pointedly. "You people have been closing down projects right and left - surely there's a cabinet, a Bunsen burner, a microscope somewhere..."  
  
"I suppose," Mitchell conceded. "But the cost of being found out will be my job, not to mention that the project I'm working on now takes up a full day's worth of work. If I were to take on Veracity again, I'd practically have to live here at the Centre."  
  
"If you're careful and make sure nobody DOES find out, the reward for finishing the project would be beyond your wildest dreams. It would make bunking down there at the Centre worth any discomfort."  
  
Mitchell pushed her glasses up her nose a little and brushed one tendril of long, mousy brown hair out of her face and back toward the chignon from which it had escaped. "What reward is that?"  
  
"The undying gratitude of your country - and the continuing opportunity to put your talents to use helping us keep the US safe." Stiller knew he was probably sounding like a recruiting film narrator, but there actually were those who bought into this kind of thing. "The monetary reward will be substantial, and will only increase as you continue to give your service to your country.  
  
"I'll have to think about this for a while," Mitchell said after a pause. "Will that be all right?"  
  
Stiller grinned. "Of course it would be. When would you like me to call back?"  
  
"Can you give me until tomorrow evening?"  
  
The colonel nodded enthusiastically. "I'll call you at your home at seven-thirty tomorrow evening, then. Thank you for your time, Doctor."  
  
"Until tomorrow, Colonel..."  
  
Mitchell waited until the military man had hung up from his end and then pushed the button to end the recording. She'd have to requisition a recorder with a microphone to attach to her home phone for tomorrow evening as well. She dialed another Centre extension. "Can I speak to the director of SIS, please? This is Dr. Lauren Mitchell down in Pharmaceuticals."  
  
There was a wait. Then, "This is Chip Harrison, assistant director of Security. What can I do for you, Doctor Mitchell?"  
  
"I just got the most interesting telephone call from a Colonel Stiller, and I thought I should report it, considering what Miss Parker told us to expect..."  
  
Lauren Mitchell calmly and determinedly related the gist of her entire conversation with Colonel Stiller, and once the call was concluded, popped the mini-cassette from the recorder to slip it into an envelope that would delivered to the Security office by courier within minutes. She dug in a drawer for a replacement cassette and popped it back into her recorder with a satisfied feeling.  
  
It was only a few weeks since Miss Parker had come all the way down to SL-12 and made sure that she and all of her colleagues in Pharmaceuticals made it back to the surface in one piece after the bombing. There was no way in Hell that she'd betray Miss Parker after the woman had done that for her and over a hundred other people she didn't even know!   
  
Mitchell turned back to her notes on her new project and buried her chin in her palm, trying to wrap her mind around this new chemical puzzle. As far as she was concerned, she had infinitely better things to do than mess around with bio-toxins for the military when it was becoming obvious that the top brass knew nothing of what was going on.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Kevin looked both ways before crossing the street in front of Sydney's house, then trotted across the pavement until he could wriggle his bare feet in the comfortably cool grass of the park. Over the last few days, he had started making a habit of taking an hour after lunch - an hour during which Sydney invariably was starting to nap - and go to the park to practice some of the complicated exercises that Ikeda had been teaching him.   
  
The exercise never failed to work out many of the kinks and cramps that developed during an entire day spend basically reading and assessing the mountain of data that was the Centre's hardcopy archives. Sydney had approved the idea when asked, just as he had approved of Ikeda beginning to give the young Pretender an opening series of movements and stances to begin training muscles unaccustomed to use. The ninja had a great deal of patience with the unschooled and impatient young man - and Sydney could see that giving over a small portion of his evening protection duty to the most basic training was proving restful to his Japanese bodyguard.  
  
Kevin found his favorite place beneath a stately elm tree and stood quietly, breathing in and out steadily in a calming pattern until his heart was beating steadily and without stress in his chest. Then he moved his feet to shoulder-width apart and sank slightly to begin the exercise.   
  
"Who the hell do you think you are, Quay Chang Caine?" came a mocking voice from one side. Kevin's concentration faltered, and he straightened and turned.  
  
"Who is Quay Chang Caine?" he asked the young woman standing with one hand on her hip, leaning against an elm tree a few yards away. It took a moment for him to recognize her and put a name with her face - her name was Crystal.   
  
"Don't you know anything?" she straightened and walked toward him.  
  
"I know plenty," he replied defensively. "Just not the person you mentioned."  
  
She shrugged. "He was a character on an old TV show - 'Kung Fu'..."  
  
Kevin's frown deepened slightly. "This isn't Kung Fu," he explained to her. "This is Ninjitsu."  
  
"It's all Greek to me," Crystal tossed off with a tone of derision. "You look like you were trying to fight shadows in slow motion."  
  
The young Pretender could tell that she was trying to upset him, so he closed his eyes briefly and began anew the breathing exercise. When he'd put down the feelings of frustration, he bent his knees and began the exercise again.  
  
"What about jumping up in the air and doing flying kicks and stuff. Do you do that too?" Crystal asked from a little bit closer.  
  
"Right now I'm just trying to learn this kata," Kevin grumbled at her, peeved that her question had once more broken into his concentration and disrupted the exercise. "And I can't do that and talk at the same time."  
  
"So how about being social and talking to me, rather than doing that stupid exercise and looking like a geek?" she smiled at him and plunked herself at the base of his favorite elm tree, obviously having no intention of leaving him alone in the near future.  
  
"What do you want of me?" Kevin straightened and went over to lean against the tree and look down on her.  
  
"I didn't know you lived here," she said brightly, glad that she'd finally caught his entire attention.  
  
"You didn't ask."  
  
"OK," she agreed reluctantly. "So, let me put that in the form of a question then. You live around here?"  
  
The young Pretender's first inclination was to tell her everything, but very quickly he remembered what could happen when unwelcome people were made aware of where people lived. "Yeah," he said, deliberately letting his answer be vague for the time being. "What about you - you live here in Blue Cove too?"  
  
"I live wherever I feel like living," Crystal answered with a toss of her head.   
  
"What about your family?" Kevin was confused.   
  
"Them." Her voice left no doubt that she thought very little about her family. "They live in Boston. I haven't seen them in a long time." She looked up at Kevin. "What about you? You live here with your folks?"  
  
"My uncle," Kevin said proudly. He had never realized until that horrible night in the hospital how much he had wanted to belong to someone. Now that Sydney had given him permission to claim the older psychiatrist as family, he felt a thrill every time he had the opportunity to bring up the relationship.  
  
Crystal could hear the fondness in her companion's voice for his uncle. "How nice for you," she said with a stab of jealousy. "Do you get along with him?"  
  
Kevin looked down at her, startled. "Of course I do. He takes very good care of me."  
  
"You're lucky then," she replied, looking down and playing with the blades of grass.  
  
"Where DO you live?" Kevin inquired more closely.   
  
She glanced up at him and then looked down again. "There's an old house outside of town a ways that nobody lives in anymore," she finally explained. "Me and a couple of others found a broken window and unlocked it."  
  
"Don't you have a real home?" the young Pretender folded his legs and dropped to the ground next to her.  
  
She tossed her head and looked at him defiantly. "You mean like with a Mommy and a Daddy or an Uncle to 'take care of me?' No, thank you! The last time I had a 'real' home like that, it took me a month to lose the bruises of my Dad 'taking care of me.'" She laughed, a bitter and pained sound, at her companion's look of outright shock and dismay. "Oh, come on now! Surely life with that uncle of yours isn't all peaches and cream all the time..."  
  
"It's a lot better than the place I was before," Kevin snapped defensively. "They didn't let me go anywhere, do anything, talk to anybody..."  
  
"Sounds like my folks," Crystal commiserated. "My mom never did approve of the friends I'd bring home..."  
  
"No," Kevin shook his head firmly. "I mean that I literally wasn't allowed to go anywhere. There was this one man, Vernon Grey, he was my teacher, mentor, trainer... For years, he was one of only eight people I ever saw..." He'd been watching her expression as he tried to explain his background and could see that she wasn't believing a word of what he was saying. "Sydney takes good care of me," he insisted stubbornly, "and I take good care of him now too."  
  
"You sound positively domesticated," she shook her head at him. "Good little lapdog..."  
  
"It isn't like that!" Kevin snapped again. "I know what it means to be all alone in the world - and I like what I've got now a whole lot more."  
  
"Oh, yeah? Well, I bet you had to ask permission to go outside, didn't you?"  
  
"No," he retorted in the same derisive tone as her question, "I didn't have to ask permission to go outside. All Sydney asks is that I tell him where I'm going and how long I think I'll be gone."  
  
"OK, so you're not caged - but you sure are on a leash!"  
  
The young Pretender stared at her in open confusion. "What are you so mad at me for?" he asked finally. "Why is it that my living in a good home bothers you?"  
  
Crystal stared up at him for a moment, her rebellious certainty shattered by his pointed questions. "I gotta go," she said finally, climbing quickly to her feet. "I'll see you around, Lapdog." She began to walk away quickly.  
  
"The name's Kevin," he called after her, "not Lapdog."  
  
She tossed her hand casually into the air to acknowledge that she'd heard him but kept right on walking across the park away from him.  
  
Kevin found himself thinking back to the first time he'd met Crystal - in the hospital waiting room right after Sydney was injured. She'd been an angry young woman then too, openly rebellious of official hospital policy and - with her companion that night - ready to cause trouble. Deb and Davy, the only other young people he'd met so far, had seemed happy with their lives - what would have made Crystal so suspicious and bitter about staying with family?  
  
He rose to his feet and tried to start the breathing exercise once more, only to find the disturbing sound of Crystal's voice in his mind still distracting him. What was a 'geek' and did he truly look like one while he practiced his kata? Would Sydney know?  
  
He glanced over at the front of Sydney's house. The psychiatrist was probably fast asleep still. He wouldn't be able to put his puzzlement at his mentor's feet for explanation for - he looked at his watch - half an hour yet.   
  
With a sigh, he deliberately dismissed all thoughts of the contrary young woman from his mind and began his breathing exercises again. When the time came, he moved his feet into position and bent his knees and began the slow and studied movements. He was astonished that as time passed he was able to relax from the defensive attitude his encounter had caused in him. With a smile he remembered one of the first things that Ikeda-sensei, which is what his ninja teacher had asked to be called, had told him about the power of the kata: "Mind and body, when linked though mindfulness and concentration, become a powerful team."  
  
He reached the end of the movements that his teacher had presented to him so far and, as instructed, calmly and smoothly moved back into the opening moves again to repeat the exercise. The half-hour would pass quickly enough.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Chip Harrison walked up to the desk in front of Miss Parker's office and gently tapped on the top of the monitor screen to catch the young Chinese secretary's attention. "Is he free?" he asked casually, nodding his head in the direction of the office door.  
  
"Yes, sir," Mei-Chiang smiled graciously at the man who was standing in for Sam while he was in California. "Let me tell him you're here."  
  
"Send him on in," came the voice over the intercom, and Mei-Chiang gestured for the hulking assistant director of Security to continue in.   
  
"So," Tyler said, leaning back in his chair as Chip carefully closed the door behind himself, "what's up?"  
  
"Do you remember yesterday asking me to make a DSA of your meeting with a Colonel Stiller?" Harrison asked as he took a seat and stretched out his long legs in front of him.  
  
"Yeah?" Tyler's brows folded together.  
  
"Well, a couple of hours ago, I got a call from a Dr. Mitchell down in Pharmaceuticals, telling me that she'd just received a call from Colonel Stiller too. Seems the colonel is trying to go behind our backs and get his projects up and running again."  
  
Tyler shook his head. "Miss Parker was afraid that might happen. She warned..."  
  
Harrison held up a hand with a chuckle. "I heard about what Miss Parker said to the staff involved in the cancelled projects. Lemme tell you, if Dr. Mitchell is anything like the rest of the staff, the military bigwigs we just stepped on will have a helluva time recruiting our staff to moonlight on the cancelled projects."  
  
"Really?" Somehow, Tyler wasn't all that surprised. Pharmaceuticals had been one of the departments that he and Miss Parker had 'liberated' after the bombing - and he'd been there at the meeting after all were safe. The morale of the workers, far from being abysmal at the events they'd survived, had been bolstered by the knowledge that their Chairman herself had gone down those many flights of stairs after them all on her own. Since then, company loyalty had been at an all-time high, according to those who were in a position to know such things. "I take it Dr. Mitchell told him to take a hike?"  
  
"Actually," Harrison grinned, "she told him that she'd need some time to think about it. He's going to call her back at her home tomorrow evening at seven-thirty. I'm thinking..."  
  
"I'm thinking that maybe we should find out who is Colonel Stiller's direct superior at the Pentagon, bring that person up to speed on what is being done. We should know soon enough whether Stiller is working outside his authority or not." Tyler leaned forward in his chair. "Getting these guys in trouble with their own superiors would seem to me to be the wisest move on our part."  
  
"We're going to need to have a meeting with Miss Parker and Mr. Atlee first thing in the morning, to bring them up to speed on what seems to be a developing trend," Harrison told his boss firmly.   
  
"Mei-Chiang," Tyler punched the intercom button, "I need you to make an appointment for Mr. Harrison and myself to meet with Miss Parker and Mr. Atlee first thing in the morning. Make it her very first order of business, if you can."  
  
"Yes, sir."   
  
"Tell Xing-Li that I need her in my office a half-hour before work normally starts then. I want the chance to get her settled before I have to start this business."  
  
"Yes, sir." Mei-Chiang smiled. Xing-Li would find Mr. Tyler a very good boss to work for - and Mr. Tyler couldn't want a more efficient or capable secretary.  
  
"So," Harrison crossed his long legs and rested his long arms on the padded cushions of the arms of his chair, "do you think that getting Stiller slapped down by the Pentagon will put an end to all this skullduggery?"  
  
Tyler shook his head. "I doubt it. For one thing, we've had more than just Stiller in my office - Miss Parker's office - complaining about having projects cancelled. At least one of the people Miss Parker spoke to was a Senator." His face grew serious. "I have a hunch that we're just at the beginning of this one."  
  
"You don't think that they'll cause problems for the Centre, do you?"  
  
"I'm not sure," Tyler replied with a shrug. "Remember, this is the US government we're talking about here, in all its permutations. It has more tentacles than an octopus, and half the time one tentacle doesn't have the slightest idea what the rest of 'em are up to."  
  
Harrison looked disgusted. "Thrills."  
  
"I'm betting that Stiller is one of the lower lackeys of something fairly unorganized. I mean Stiller's single big worry was about a project codenamed Veracity." Tyler reached out for the folder of cancelled projects that he'd made a point of keeping very close at hand on his desk. "But this thing is FULL of projects just like Veracity - and each with a different government liaison officer."  
  
"Hell, that could mean that we could end up hearing from each and every one of those guys!"  
  
"That's right." Tyler didn't look at all pleased with the idea.   
  
"You know, I'll be glad when Sam gets back and I can hand over his department back," Harrison said tiredly.  
  
"Let me tell you, I'll be just as glad when Miss Parker's back in THIS saddle too," Tyler agreed. "I'm glad she got a vacation, but I'm glad she's coming back. She and Sam are better at this kind of underhanded political stuff."  
  
"I'll be glad when we don't HAVE anymore of that underhanded political stuff to worry about around here," Harrison nodded his agreement.  
  
Tyler leaned back in his chair tiredly. "That's for damned sure."   
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"What time are they supposed to be here?" Kevin asked, putting down the folder regarding one of Jarod's old security protocols for the Centre mainframe and looking across the room at his mentor.   
  
Sydney looked up, then looked over at the clock on the wall of the den. "Provided that they're on time, they should be landing in about a half-hour." He watched his young protégé fiddle with the folder he'd been studying. "Getting anxious, are you?"  
  
"Aren't you?" Kevin asked back.  
  
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I am." Sydney smiled a smile that was slightly less than enthusiastic. He had missed his foster daughter and her son desperately - not having had them removed from his life for any length of time for years - but well aware that their return marked the end of his holding back information about Davy. He'd have to talk to Davy about the pressing need to share years-old confidences at long last with Miss Parker, and then he'd have the gargantuan task of getting her to understand what he'd done and why.   
  
"Is Deb still going to be staying here with us?" Kevin inquired, setting the folder aside entirely at last.  
  
"Yes," Sydney answered patiently. "We've already discussed this, you know..."  
  
Blue eyes touched him with a hint of guilt and then looked away. "Sydney, what's a 'geek?'"  
  
Sydney's chestnut gaze didn't waver. "A 'geek' is someone who behaves or dresses differently or more idiosyncratically than most people. Why?"  
  
"Someone told me that I looked like a geek while I was doing my kata..." Kevin explained painfully, not at all happy about that part of the explanation he'd needed.  
  
"Who told you that?"  
  
"A girl I met in the park..."  
  
"Mmmmmm..." Sydney nodded his head knowingly. "A girl?"  
  
"Mmm-hmmm." Kevin nodded with a stricken look on his face. "Do I really look like a geek when I do the kata?"  
  
"Kevin," Sydney sighed. "Maybe a young girl who doesn't understand what a kata is or what it is supposed to accomplish might make that assessment. To others, however, the movements are beautiful to watch, like a dance. To people like that, you most certainly would NOT look like a geek." He gazed at his protégé with sympathy. "If you enjoy doing the kata, then don't let what other people think be any of your concern. You want to learn from Mr. Ikeda, don't you?"  
  
"Yes, but..."  
  
"Are you ashamed of what Mr. Ikeda has taught you so far?"  
  
"No, of course not..."  
  
"Then don't let the comment of a girl whom you don't know well make so much difference to you," Sydney summed up the line of reasoning for him firmly. "Be who you want to be without apology, Kevin. Provided that what you do is not against the law, NOBODY has any business telling you what you can or can't do."  
  
Kevin blinked. "Not even you?"  
  
"Not even me," Sydney nodded. "I can put my wishes to you in terms of preference - such as I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me when you leave where you're going and about how long you're going to be gone - but ultimately, if you decide not to do that, I have no way of preventing you from taking off." He gave the young man a sharp look. "Of course, the situation here when you return from such a trip might be much different than the one you'd have found had you done as I'd asked, but that's another matter entirely."  
  
"Would you throw me out?"  
  
Sydney blinked. "Of course not! Whatever gave you that idea?"  
  
"I just thought..."  
  
"When we agreed that you'd stay here, it wasn't under the condition that you continually do as I ask like a good little Pretender robot, Kevin." Sydney shook his head. "Vernon might have approached this in that manner, but not I."  
  
"She called me a lapdog," Kevin mumbled.  
  
"What?"  
  
Kevin looked up into his mentor's warm gaze with an expression of disgust. "She called me a lapdog for saying that I'd tell you when I leave, where I'd go and how long..."  
  
Sydney finally chuckled. "Sounds like you ran into a true rebel, Kevin - someone for whom any authority is too much."  
  
"Am I?"  
  
"A lapdog?" Kevin nodded, obviously hanging on his mentor's assessment. "God, no! I'd be doing my level best to teach you not to be if you were, I promise you!"  
  
"Why would she think it's such a bad thing to live in a good home with family?" Kevin was genuinely confused now.  
  
Sydney sighed. "Because not all families work properly. Not all parents are good ones, and sometimes the family unit breaks apart due to violence in the home or disrespect between the members."  
  
"She said that her father gave her bruises..."  
  
"She was probably an abused child then," the old psychiatrist shook his head sadly. "For her, there has never been such a thing as a 'good' home. So when she hears about yours, she has no standard of measure outside the Hell that she escaped."  
  
"Parents abuse their kids?" The young Pretender was appalled. "Do you think... mine..."  
  
"Some parents do," Sydney admitted. "But yours probably won't - and if they did, you'd always have a place here with me if you wanted to come back." He gazed at his young friend. "So... Do you feel better now?"  
  
Kevin gave him a shaky smile. "I think so..." he replied. "In case I haven't said it before, and in case I forget to ever say so again, thank you for letting me stay here."  
  
The old psychiatrist shifted on his couch. "It's my pleasure, Kevin - especially if I can talk you into taking me off of this gizmo a few minutes early today."  
  
Kevin's smile grew. "I think I can do that," he said, rising and coming over so that he could turn the machine off. "And I won't even tell Peter you fudged your time today." He knew Sydney's physical therapist would scold the older man for short-changing himself at all on the therapy machine.  
  
"I knew I could count on you, dear boy," Sydney laughed. He then watched with fondness as the sandy-haired Pretender began to undo the straps that kept his leg tied to the machine. The young man so deserved a family of his own. Sydney prayed, not for the first time, that somewhere in those boxes in his living room would be the key to giving Kevin his family back.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"Well?"  
  
Colonel Stiller smiled at the sound of the voice in his cell phone. "I'm supposed to call this Dr. Mitchell tomorrow evening, sir. From the sounds of things, she MAY be willing to restart Veracity."  
  
"Good work." General Curtis ran his fingers across his buzz cut. "Have you had any luck with any of the other Centre staff?"  
  
Stiller shook his head. "I'm having to really dig to find out who the scientific staff were in charge of those other projects, sir. Veracity I knew about because it was MY baby. But Black Hole, for example..."  
  
"Look," Curtis' voice became firm and cold. "We need those projects back on line, and we need to get moving on them NOW. Find out who you need to talk to and get things moving. You don't want my boss breathing down MY neck - because that will mean that I'll have to start breathing down YOUR neck, and then we'll ALL be very unhappy campers." The voice had gained an unpleasant and lethal tone. "Do you understand what I'm telling you?"  
  
Stiller swallowed. "Yes, sir! I'll get right on it, sir!"  
  
"See that you do!" Curtis barked and then hung up abruptly.  
  
Stiller swallowed hard again. No, he didn't want any of the shit to start rolling downhill from the Capitol and landing on his collar. But Curtis and anybody above him in authority in this effort just didn't understand the magnitude of what was being asked.  
  
Each of the projects that the Centre had taken on had its own liaison officer from one branch of the service or another. In order to avoid mass disclosure of these quiet efforts, there was no central office where these liaison officers or their related projects were listed. Finding out which scientist at the Centre had been responsible for which project was going to take time and careful investigation. The last thing any of them needed was either the Pentagon OR the Centre authorities figuring out what was going on.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"We're landing, Deb," Miss Parker said gently and smoothed her hand down Deb's arm in the seat next to her until the young woman began to rouse. "We're landing," she repeated and then felt Deb straighten slightly in her seat.  
  
"Already?" was the sleepy question.  
  
"You slept most of the way," Davy commented from the other side of the jet.   
  
"I hope you can get some sleep tonight too," Miss Parker said quietly, "and not have mixed your days and nights up for yourself."  
  
"I'll be OK," Deb insisted firmly, pulling the comfortable blue blanket down from her shoulders and beginning to fold it up again. "I didn't sleep well in the hospital anyway."  
  
"I can't wait to see Grandpa!" Davy bubbled happily. "And Kevin!"  
  
"It will be good to be home again," Miss Parker agreed easily. She had missed her foster father a great deal while in California, making do with regular phone calls. All during the flight home, she'd been mulling over what Sydney could possibly have been doing with Davy that he didn't feel comfortable talking about over the phone. But in the end, all she wanted to do, once she was back on the ground, was give her foster father a huge hug. She didn't even want to have that discussion with him until she was rested up from her trip. She looked over at Deb. "You ready to be home again?"  
  
"Absolutely," Deb said firmly. "I want to see my dad."  
  
"I'm sure he wants to see you too, sweetheart." Miss Parker put a careful and gentle arm around her foster daughter's shoulders and gave her a quick hug.   
  
Deb suffered the quick and careful embrace without a single flinch. Davy was wrong - she hadn't slept the entire trip. She'd been reviewing what Jarod had told her and talking herself into honoring the boundaries that she and Miss Parker had finally agreed to earlier. Part of those boundaries were to allow random and spur-of-the-moment demonstrations of affection, provided those demonstrations didn't come with an 'are you OK?' But Miss Parker had gone back to calling her 'Deb' - that would have to be something she'd work at fixing. She still didn't want to be 'Deb' anymore - but getting everybody to call her 'Debbie' again as they had in years past would take some time.  
  
Sam watched over the three of them with an expressionless face, his fondness for them warming the depths of his heart. Miss Parker had been very thorough in making it clear to him that he was a part of her family, and she had chided him several times privately when he would let his continuing guilt at failing to protect her and her family show again. Even Jarod had done his best to let the ex-sweeper know that he didn't hold him responsible - but it made no difference. Deep down, Sam knew it would be a long time before he'd finally forgive himself. And until that day, he'd only work that much harder to earn the respect and affection that was so liberally coming his way.   
  
Davy had been unequivocal - Sam had always been one of the boy's favorite people, and that fact hadn't changed a bit over the last week. In fact, if anything, Davy seemed even more willing to hang close to his foster-uncle now. He'd relocated to sit next to Sam during the flight so that they could play Battleships to pass the time while Deb and Miss Parker had dozed in their seats. And Sam could remember that Davy had practically begged for his beloved 'tips' while still at Jarod's. Poor little Ginger had been terrified - and would have been even more so had he reached down and actually given Davy what he asked for. For a short time, that little face remained at the front of his mind while he wondered if she would ever see him as something other than huge and scary.  
  
His gaze eventually landed on the young woman now gazing out the window of the jet at the darkness around them. Deb had allowed him to begin calling her 'Short Stuff' again - an old nickname of his for her from years ago. He'd done it to make her more at ease with him in the hospital, but found that once started, he didn't want to stop. She seemed more responsive to it than when he called her by name now - and maybe that was something that Sydney needed to know about.   
  
Then the wheels of the little jet touched back down to solid ground and rumbled over the pavement as the plane headed for the small hangar that the Centre maintained at the airstrip. Sam was out of his seat and had the hatch open almost as the jet came to a gentle halt. He dropped the steps so that the passengers could disembark and leaned out of the jet, checking the darkened tarmac to make sure that his phoned-in order for the Centre limousine to be on hand and ready when they landed had been followed. A quick wave of the hand summoned the limo driver to pull the car forward.  
  
"Limo's here," he announced, watching Deb get slowly and painfully to her feet.   
  
Deb could feel his eyes on her, measuring whether or not he should move forward to offer to carry her down the steps. The long trip with her foot once more propped up on the box and pillow had made her foot tender to the point that it was very painful to put any weight on it at all. She shot a sideways glance at Miss Parker, helping Davy stick his games away in his small overnight bag, and then looked back up into Sam's waiting face. "Could you help me, please?" she asked softly.  
  
"Sure!" Sam moved forward with a contented smile and lifted her up into his arms.  
  
Miss Parker noted the request and nodded in satisfaction. After a very difficult time in the early morning hours, the two of them had spent part of the first hours of their flight discussing boundaries and expectations. It seemed that Deb was willing to live up to her part of the bargain too - and that would make life easier. "I'll get the bags, Sam," she called after her Security Chief after putting Davy in motion to follow him down the steep steps.   
  
Sam let the duty sweeper drive the car from the airstrip into Blue Cove, feeling the fatigue of seven hours of flight time in his bones. He was getting WAY too old to be gallivanting across the continent with any frequency - and the thought of actually sleeping in his own, comfortable bed that night was almost intoxicating. He did sit up front next to the driver, however - his place was to safeguard the people behind him after all.  
  
Deb and Davy both leaned into Miss Parker tiredly as they made the last, short, leg of their journey from California to home. All of them were too tired to be talkative, and Deb was feeling insecure enough that she leaned heavily against the older woman's shoulder. Miss Parker settled back against the comfortable seat and put her arm around the young woman's shoulders and held her close.   
  
Finally the limousine turned into the driveway of Sydney's Washington Street house, where the porch light had been lit in expectation of their arrival. Sam was out of the front passenger seat and opening the door to let Davy out first when the front door of the house opened and Kevin bounced down the walk. "You're home!" he announced happily, and gave Davy a big welcoming hug.  
  
Davy gazed up into the face of the young Pretender and eyed the small bandage that covered a portion of a cheek that looked in the dim porch light as if it were sporting a fading bruise. "What happened to you?" he asked, then looked down in chagrin. "I'm sorry."  
  
"Don't worry about it," Kevin told his young friend as he let him go and began watching the car door for Deb's emergence.   
  
"Grandpa!" Davy finally caught sight of his grandfather making his way out the front door slowly on his crutches. Sydney moved the right crutch to join its twin under his left arm and held out the right arm to his grandson. Davy closed in and wrapped his arms around his grandfather tightly. "You're OK," Sydney could hear the boy reassuring himself again and again. "You're really OK."  
  
"Let me look at you," the psychiatrist said, putting the boy away from him slightly so he could get a good look. Davy's skin was dark - the sunburn had mostly faded away to a very dark tan - and his voice was a little rough, but he was OK. Sydney pulled the boy close again, delighting in the feel of those arms around his waist once more. "I'm really OK," he assured his grandson gently.  
  
Miss Parker emerged from the car next, then turned to Sam. "Would you mind hanging around long enough to take Davy and myself home, please?"  
  
"Sure thing," he replied with a nod, not at all surprised. After all, this stop was to drop off Deb with her grandfather for the night and to say a quick hello to Sydney and Kevin before heading home. He bent down and peered in at the young woman who was shifting slowly to a place close to the door. "Need a hand?"  
  
"I'm OK this time," she told him and still grabbed onto his hand and leaned hard as she pulled herself to her feet to find herself looking straight at an absolutely delighted Kevin. "Hi," she said softly, her blue eyes resting for a moment on the bandage on his face and the mottled look of the skin around it.  
  
"Hi," he answered back and then threw his arms around her. "I'm SO glad you're home!"  
  
This she still wasn't prepared for, no matter how often she'd reminded herself that this would probably be how she'd be greeted. She flinched back hard and became rigid, not returning the hug at all. Kevin could feel immediately that something was wrong, and he backed away with a shocked and worried look on his face. "I... Did I hurt you?"  
  
Sam looked down. The moment Kevin had moved forward, Deb's hand on his had tightened almost painfully - and now she was standing there almost in a daze. "Short Stuff?" he questioned quietly, bending to speak into her ear and try to break the trance of terror that she'd so abruptly slipped into.   
  
Miss Parker saw what had happened too late to prevent anything, but she moved quickly to Deb's side even as Sam spoke and put an arm around her shoulder protectively. "Come on, sweetheart," she murmured gently. "It's OK. C'mon, Deb..." She rubbed the far shoulder briskly and finally, together with Sam's question, broke through Deb's torpor. The young woman blinked as if awakening, then flinched again back into Miss Parker.  
  
"I'm sorry..." Kevin was heartbroken. Sydney had tried to warn him, but nothing could have prepared him for the emptiness and distrust that was in Deb's eyes when she looked at him. She looked at him as if he were a complete stranger.  
  
Sam could feel the young Pretender's pain. "It's not your fault, Kevin," he said quickly. "She'll be better once she's used to being around you again - but it's gonna take a little time."  
  
Miss Parker peered up into Sydney's face pleadingly, and he nodded understanding. He patted Davy's shoulder and caught the boy's attention. "Kevin, why don't you take Davy inside for a little bit. I'm sure you two have some catching up to do too." He bent to his grandson. "You and Kevin go on in for a while, so I can be with Deb and your mother."  
  
Miss Parker looked over at Sam. "Maybe you can go with them..."  
  
Kevin backed away from Deb cautiously and then turned to do as Sydney asked. All of his joy at the return of his friends had been dashed, and he was completely confused. Sam came up behind him and clapped a friendly and sympathetic hand to his shoulder and to Davy's, and the three made their way through the front door.  
  
Once it was just herself and Sydney with Deb, Miss Parker bent to her foster daughter. "What do you say that we go say hello to your grandfather and get you into the house?" she asked, tightening her arm around Deb's shoulder. Deb's eyes flicked up into hers filled with empty terror. "I'm right here," she reassured her. "You're safe."  
  
Sydney didn't make a single move - both because he knew better and because he was stable with the two crutches under one arm at the moment and didn't want to jeopardize that stability as yet. "Debbie," he called softly, "it's all right, ma petite. Nobody will harm you here."  
  
The softly accented voice shattered the hold her inner terrors had on her, and she blinked again. "G.. grandpa?" she asked in a small voice, taking a step away from Miss Parker in the direction of the beloved voice.  
  
"Right here, cheri," Sydney replied and put out his free arm. "Right here." He nodded at Miss Parker to release her hold on Deb, and she let the young woman limp slowly away from her hold and toward the house.  
  
"Grandpa..." Deb limped up to the older man and looked at him for a long moment, making sure that her eyes weren't deceiving her, and then leaned against the solid chest and felt him enfold her close. "I heard you," she remembered suddenly. "I heard you yell for me to run..."  
  
"You're safe now," he carefully took his hand from his crutches so he could embrace her more completely. "And everything will be all right soon." He stroked the long and slightly mussed blonde hair gently. "I promise."  
  
Sydney looked over the top of Deb's head as she huddled against him and into Miss Parker's face. She was tired and truly saddened, he could tell, at the way in which Deb was behaving. This entire episode had done her easily as much harm inwardly, where only the truly aware would notice, as it had done to any of the rest of them outwardly. Without even thinking, he lifted his free arm from Deb and extended it to her, inviting her to join in the hug - to lean too.  
  
It was an offer that Miss Parker couldn't resist. She moved into his embrace, leaving plenty of room for Deb to huddle against him while she rested her head wearily on his right shoulder. "I missed you," she told him very softly as her arm wound around him to hold him back. "I am SO glad to be home."  
  
"I'm SO glad to have you back," he replied, giving her cheek a gentle peck. "I've missed having my girls around me."  
  
Miss Parker sighed and closed her eyes. Long and difficult talks about mysterious mind games could wait - right now, all that mattered was that she was home where she belonged, and that Deb was home where her healing could begin in earnest.   
  
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com 


	4. Night Voices

Resolutions - 4  
  
Night Voices  
  
by MMB  
  
Jarod put down his fork and picked up the telephone handset. "Hello?"  
  
"Hi, it's me. We're home." Miss Parker's voice sounded tired.  
  
He dropped the microphone away from his chin and looked over at the others at the table. "It's Mommy. They're home - and safe." Ginger's eyes brightened slightly and she smiled while Margaret patted her little granddaughter's hand. He brought the phone back up. "How was the trip?"  
  
"Long," she said with a sigh, "Deb and I finally talked a bit and set our boundaries."  
  
"I'm glad to hear that. How's Davy doing?"  
  
That brought a chuckle. "He complained that it was 'too early' to go to bed, but I got him down a few minutes ago." She dropped her overnight bag into a chair next to her bedroom window and sat down on the edge of her bed. "And I'm just about to cave in myself. I'm not looking forward to starting a busy day tomorrow with a mammoth case of jet-lag."  
  
He chuckled back. "Sprite and I agree that the house is just a little bit too quiet now that you two are gone, don't we?" He watched his little girl nod up and down vigorously. "Trust me, she agrees."  
  
"I miss you two too," Miss Parker sighed back. "Now, how soon was that court date Crandall called about last night?"  
  
"Two weeks," Jarod said firmly. "It's going to be a damned long two weeks..."  
  
"How about the two prospects you and Ethan were thinking about?"  
  
"I called both of them this afternoon," he told her in a tone of satisfaction. "They'll be in for interviews at the end of the week. Hopefully by this time next week, we'll know who is going to take my place and can start easing him into my schedule. That way we can head home as soon as the adoption is final." He paused and popped a quick bite of casserole in his mouth. "What about you? Have you talked to Tyler yet? Did the Centre fall in while you were gone?"  
  
"I called him from Sydney's. He said things have been 'interesting'..." Jarod could just hear the dry humor that would have been in Tyler's voice saying such a thing. "Sam and I are meeting with him and Sam's assistant in the morning to discuss the developments."  
  
"Speaking of whom, how IS Sydney?" Jarod asked quickly. "How's that leg of his?"  
  
"Well," Miss Parker said with a grunt as she shed her blouse with one hand while still holding the phone with the other, switching hands in mid-comment, "he met us at the front door when we got home, and he was vertical at least."  
  
"That's good to hear. On crutches, right?"  
  
"Mmm-hmmm. I was glad, too - because Kevin gave Deb a hug she wasn't ready for and really knocked her for a loop. Once she made it to Sydney, she wouldn't leave his side - she glued herself to him and didn't stray an inch."  
  
"Oh boy," Jarod grimaced. "I need to call him tomorrow, don't I?"  
  
"Yeah," she hedged. "Jarod, there was something else - and with everything that was going on while I was there, I didn't tell you... But you need to know..."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I found out that Sydney's been playing some kind of 'game' with Davy - they both call it 'mind games.' You don't think..."  
  
The Pretender sat back in his chair, cradling the telephone against his ear. "What kind of 'mind games?'"  
  
She shook her head. "About all I could get out of Sydney on the phone this morning when I asked him about it was that they were 'what if' games..."  
  
"SIMs." Jarod said the word dully. "Sydney had Davy doing SIMs?"  
  
Across the table, Margaret had gone slightly pale. "Oh my God!" she muttered under her breath.  
  
"He wouldn't have been training our son as a Pretender... would he?" Miss Parker worried at him.  
  
Jarod's mind whirled. He knew that Sydney loved that child dearly and would never do anything that wasn't ultimately in Davy's best interest. He also knew that Sydney had been trained to see the signs of genius in children and develop it effectively. "I wouldn't be in too much of a rush to condemn him yet, Missy," he soothed uneasily. "If Sydney was having Davy run SIMs, there has to be a good reason for it. Give him a chance to explain..." He found himself having to put on a convincing face for his mother too, who was glaring at him in disbelief.  
  
"But why wouldn't he have said anything to me about it?"  
  
That was the question for which Jarod had no ready answer. "I'm sure he must have thought he had a good reason," he said, knowing how inadequate that sounded, even to himself.  
  
"There were a lot of things over the years that he thought he had a good reason to keep from me," Miss Parker said sourly. "But I thought we'd gotten past all of that years ago."  
  
"Don't create problems for the two of you out of nothing, Missy," Jarod advised carefully. "He loves you, and he loves Davy - more, I think, than he loves life itself. Besides, he raised me, remember? He didn't do all that badly by me, did he?"  
  
"No..." She had to admit that even in the worst of scenarios, Sydney had not failed as a decent role model for Jarod. Heck, when he'd announced that he was stepping into a parental role with her after her accident years ago, she'd felt a rush of gratitude because she KNEW he was far better father material than the man who'd always claimed her as his daughter ever had been. Other than a frighteningly lethal soft-spoken fury that was to be avoided at all costs, he was patient and kind and constantly keeping an eye on her welfare. "He's been a good father for me too, these last few years. And," she felt obliged to report, "according to Deb, Davy's ability to use his mind creatively was the key to their getting away and getting rescued before..."  
  
Jarod nodded. That also explained some of Davy's difficulty in relinquishing responsibility when he felt his actions were the cause of consequences. "Then give him the benefit of the doubt," he told her firmly. "Let him explain himself fully. If nothing else, no matter how hard it is to swallow, he will have done us all a favor by giving Davy the tools to see him through this nightmare and come out alive."  
  
"I intend to at least try to give him the benefit of the doubt," she said, then held the phone away from her ear long enough to slip her nightgown over her head and let it fall into position on her shoulders. "I just wanted to let you know..."  
  
"I appreciate that," Jarod said gently. "This was something we both needed to be aware of. And I want you to CALL me and tell me what he had to say for himself - or else tell him that I want to talk to him about it too. But right now you're sounding awfully tired, sweetheart. You want to say goodnight to Ginger before you go to bed?"  
  
Miss Parker smiled. "Sure. Give her the phone."  
  
Jarod held the phone out to the little girl around the corner of the table. "Mommy wants to talk to you. Here she is," he announced loudly enough so that Missy could hear him on the other end.  
  
"Hi, Sprite," Miss Parker said softly into the phone, bringing a picture of her new daughter to the forefront of her mind. "Did you have a good day?"  
  
Ginger nodded vigorously. "That's a yes," Jarod announced so Miss Parker could know she got a response.  
  
"Are you and Teddy taking good care of Daddy for me?"  
  
Ginger's eyes found her teddy where she'd carefully put it, propped in one of the other kitchen chairs at the table with them, and she nodded seriously. "That's another affirmative," Jarod called out.  
  
"Then you have a good night, baby girl. I love you, you know..." Miss Parker found it not at all hard to say the words and wondered why she hadn't said them in California, directly to her new daughter, while she'd had the chance.   
  
The little girl cuddled the phone into her ear and her eyes grew wide. It was one thing to hear Him tell her He loved her, or even Grandma Maggie, but now SHE was doing it too! Ginger's jaw dropped a bit and her gaze flitted to touch His.   
  
Jarod watched the child's reaction to whatever it was that Miss Parker must have said to her with interest. Whatever it had been, it had touched something deep inside her, because all of a sudden the lips were opening and closing slowly, as if Ginger wanted to say something back. When he put his hand out for the telephone, she handed it to him almost in a daze. "Whatever you just told her," he told the woman on the other end, "it made quite an impression."  
  
"I just told her I loved her and said goodnight," Miss Parker explained with a bump of astonishment and chagrin.   
  
Ginger got out of her chair and then climbed up into His lap and cuddled down as she felt an arm surround her gently. Jarod kissed his little girl on the top of the head. "I think you have another fan here," he told Miss Parker softly, "and I think she misses you - a lot more than she'd expected to."  
  
"Two weeks, huh?" Miss Parker ran her fingers through her hair and closed her eyes. "You're right, it IS going to be a damned long two weeks."  
  
"I love you," Jarod said gently.  
  
"I love you too," she answered equally softly. "I'll talk to you tomorrow."  
  
"Sweet dreams, Missy."  
  
"Goodnight, Jarod."  
  
Jarod put the handset back down on the table and wrapped his other arm around the child in his lap. "I miss Mommy," he said to her softly. "Don't you?"  
  
Ginger had never thought she would have agreed with a statement like that, but now... She nodded and cuddled closer to Him.   
  
"Sydney was training Davy as a Pretender?"  
  
Jarod closed his eyes tiredly. "We don't know all the facts yet, Mom. Let's not jump to conclusions."  
  
"You know..."  
  
"No, I don't know." He gazed evenly at her over the top of Ginger's head. "Sydney loves Miss Parker and Davy very much. He'd never do anything to deliberately hurt either of them - and he knows the Centre well enough that he'd never let Davy be caught up in the mess that it was before... I'm going to wait to hear what he has to say before I decide whether to be angry or not. I owe him at least that much."  
  
"I don't trust him," Margaret said stubbornly, stabbing her green beans with her fork in frustration. "He's been a Centre lackey for too long."  
  
Jarod cradled his daughter just a little tighter against him. A part of him could understand his mother's and his fiancée's suspicious natures, and another part of him could almost understand Sydney's intentions. What were you doing, Sydney? Jarod projected his question at the mental image of his mentor in frustration. Just what the Hell did you think you were doing?  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
The back window was lowered. "So, what news?" came the gruff voice from the back seat.  
  
General Curtis slipped into the passenger seat of the dark sedan parked near the Lincoln Memorial. "Colonel Stiller has made contact with the first of our targeted scientists within the Centre and is supposed to call her tomorrow night to get her answer on whether or not she's willing to restart Veracity. But he's not managed to do much more than that..."  
  
"I told you that there would be drawbacks to keeping our organization this loose," Senator Burns snapped at the man sitting next to him. "Damn it, Curtis..."  
  
"Look," General Curtis bristled right back. "We can't afford to start bickering among ourselves. Our country is at risk of attack because of all these moderate policies that simply don't accomplish anything but look good on paper. It took us years to get ourselves accepted as legitimate business partners of the previous Centre administration, and you know this."  
  
"Yes," Harris agreed easily, "but all that history and good will isn't going to be worth the paper it's printed on if we can't get our projects back into motion."  
  
Curtis glowered at Burns. "What about the others? Do they realize how much work it's going to take - AND money - to reinvent the wheel here?"  
  
Senator Burns nodded tersely. "You gentlemen just get your people contacting the scientists themselves and getting agreement from them somehow - let me worry about the purse-strings."  
  
"There's more to worry about than just that," Curtis grumbled in his hoarse voice. "I'd imagine that when the Centre returned unexpended funding, all that money was given to the Pentagon - who we all know damned good and well will have no vested interest in seeing that we get it back. That's several million dollars, gentlemen..."  
  
"I told you to let ME worry about the funding issues," Burns barked at the general. "I have friends on the National Security Administration board - a carefully placed word will get us our funding back. But what we need more right now is to get our PROJECTS back."  
  
"The more people we involve in this, the more vulnerable we become," Harris announced somberly. "A word to the wrong person, and our efforts will be exposed to..."  
  
"I think we're all very aware of that fact, Colonel," Curtis grumbled. "That is, after all, the reason why no single one of us knows the entire network of contacts. Decentralization is key to maintaining our security - always has been."  
  
"Do we have a backup plan, in case any part of this starts to blow up in our faces?" Harris asked, looking from one dark face to another.  
  
"Yes," Burns admitted only reluctantly. "Trust me, if any part of this does start to blow up in our faces, the Centre will be sorry it ever decided to cross us."  
  
Harris refrained from commenting. He may have been full of bluster and threat while sitting in Miss Parker's office with Senator Burns a week earlier, but he'd not failed to notice the iron will that the woman's breathtakingly beautiful exterior had hidden. He'd had a few private words with some of his own contacts out in the world, all of whom had marveled at the speed and effectiveness with which the Centre had divested itself of its underworld connections - all without causing very much ripple in the subculture itself at all.   
  
"Don't underestimate the Parker woman and her organization," he warned the others carefully. "The Centre was a powerful entity before - and it's too soon for much of that reputation to have dissipated elsewhere yet. AND we know that she managed to distance herself from her mob ties without violating their sense of honor."  
  
"She's a businesswoman, Harry," the legislator shook his head. "When push comes to shove, she's as much a slave to her bottom line as any of the rest of them. Trust me, a sufficient enough threat to that bottom line should do the trick of bringing her nicely back into line."  
  
"Don't be such a doom and gloomer, Harry," Curtis chimed in. "Despite everything in the papers, you know and I know that WE are the government. It is WE who advise the advisors to the President - and it is OUR agenda that wins in the end. We WILL have a new incarnation of the old Centre, or we will see to it that the place is destroyed, utterly. Mark my words."  
  
The General slipped from the darkened seat of the sedan and back out onto the sidewalk. "I'll call when I have news from my end - you two keep in touch." He gave the car roof a congenial pat that told the driver that he could continue on his way.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Sydney shifted slightly against his pillows and cushions to make himself more comfortable. Deb, fast asleep, murmured softly and cuddled tightly against his chest. He stroked her hair gently, knowing that he really needed to rouse her so that she could go to bed in a far more comfortable and familiar place. She had attached herself to him from the moment she'd fled to the safety of his arms after the scare with Kevin, and she hadn't strayed since. Even when he'd settled back onto his daybed, she had settled down next to him and leaned unabashedly into his embrace.  
  
Frankly, he was disconcerted by her insecurity with known and loved members of her family - and he knew he needed very badly to talk to Kevin, who had been very upset by her response to his hug and had escaped to the back yard to be alone. Ikeda had gone out to join his young student, prompted by a glance from the psychiatrist over the top of Deb's head, leaving him holding his granddaughter as she finally relaxed against him and eventually dropped off to sleep.  
  
"Deb, cheri," he called softly into her hair, moving his hands on her back in rousing circles. "Time for you to head up to bed."  
  
She whimpered a complaint and huddled against him as she awoke. Grandpa, even lame as he was now, made her feel safer with his arms around her than she'd felt since running from his house over a week ago. And sleeping upstairs would put her closer to Kevin, and further away from the one person who had become her entire sense of security.  
  
"Come on, ma petite. You're tired, and so am I. I can't hold you all night..."  
  
"I haven't felt really safe until now," she whispered into his shirt. "I feel safe with you."  
  
His big hands moved and smoothed her hair back away from her face. "I know, cheri, but you ARE safe now. Much safer than you were before."  
  
"Can't I stay down here?" She raised her head and looked at him pleadingly. "Maybe in one of the easy chairs? Just for tonight, Grandpa? Please?"  
  
He cupped her face between his hands. "I'm going to need to spend some time talking to Kevin once you're asleep," he told her honestly. "He's very upset that he frightened you so, and very confused. And you need to discover that you're safe again in your own room."  
  
"But what if..."  
  
Sydney shook his head. "Debbie, do you trust me?"  
  
The crystal-blue eyes sparkled with unshed tears. "Yes, of course, but..."  
  
"Then trust me now, ma petite. I'll have Mr. Ikeda take up a post right outside your door, just to make sure nobody can get at you - and I'll explain things to Kevin again, so that maybe he won't startle you again." He pulled her head forward enough that he could deposit a kiss on her forehead. "I'll see you in the morning - and we can talk about your feelings of insecurity then. OK?"  
  
She gazed into her grandfather's chestnut eyes and found them warm and sympathetic. But it was his use of her old name that convinced her to do as he asked. She nodded finally in concession and pushed herself out of his embrace. "Debbie?" he asked as she rose to her feet.  
  
"Hmmm?"  
  
"It WILL be OK - maybe not right away, but it will get better as time passes."  
  
She nodded, totally unconvinced but unwilling to disappoint him by indicating her disbelief. She shuffled toward the front of the house, and Sydney heard her footsteps hesitate slightly before beginning to climb the stairs.  
  
He stretched and reached for his crutches, then pushed himself slowly to his feet. He made his way to the arcadia door that opened into the back yard and stood for a moment watching what was going on outside. Ikeda had done as he had hoped he would - he had convinced Kevin to get up and work on the kata, giving him a few more steps in the dance-like exercise routine to master. The two - the sandy-haired youth and the slightly built Japanese ninja - were moving through the kata smoothly and with studied grace. Kevin's face was a study of concentration, something that was far better in Sydney's estimation than the woebegone slump from earlier.  
  
Ikeda nodded in Sydney's direction and led his student through the newer, final moves in the kata, then brought their practice to an end. "Your uncle, I think, wishes to speak with you, Kevin-san," he said, then turning to his student. "We shall continue this another evening."  
  
Kevin's gaze gravitated toward the interior of the house and Sydney's figure in the arcadia doorway. He turned toward his teacher and bowed properly, as Ikeda had first taught him. "Thank you, Ikeda-sensei."  
  
Ikeda returned the traditional bow of his lineage to his student and then walked resolutely to the door. He gave a more appropriate bow of respect to the silver-haired man in the doorway. "I shall take up my post now, Green-san. Good night."  
  
"Uh..." Sydney put out a finger and detained him as he moved past. "Would you mind very much standing watch outside my granddaughter's door tonight?" He made a wry face. "She's not feeling very secure up there tonight, I'm afraid."  
  
"Hai," Ikeda bowed immediately. Moving with the silence that came from long practice, the Japanese bodyguard made his way to the front of the house and up the stairs to take up a position in the upstairs hallway.  
  
Kevin saw that Sydney didn't move when Ikeda went into the house, but rather leaned on his crutches and waited for his protégé to follow his martial arts instructor. The young man debated retreating to Davy's tree house, but thought better of it. Perhaps Sydney could help him make some sense of the way things had happened. The serenity of the kata had finally slipped away, and he shuffled his bare feet through the soft grass walking toward the patio.  
  
"Feel like talking?" the older man inquired carefully. He finally moved to come out into the velvet-like late summer evening and settled himself into one of the wooden patio chairs.  
  
"Yeah." Kevin slumped into the chair next to his mentor. "I blew it, didn't it?"  
  
"We did talk about that," Sydney reminded the young man gently, "remember?"  
  
The young Pretender began using a forefinger to trace the line of the slats that made up the arm of the chair he was in. "I know. It's just..." He looked over at Sydney. "I was just so happy to see her that..."  
  
"That you didn't stop to think that she might not want to have to be so familiar with you right away."  
  
"Sydney, she looked at me as if she didn't even know me!" Kevin complained sharply.   
  
The old psychiatrist shook his head. "I don't think she does, Kevin - as much as you might find that hard to believe. Remember, we talked about this too - the person she was before all this mess began is gone, and may never come back again. She's not doing well at all right now."  
  
"But..."  
  
"Kevin," Sydney sighed. "I told you, this is going to take time, and things may never be back to the way they were. In many ways, she's a very frightened little girl right now. I had a hard enough time just talking her into going upstairs to bed tonight."  
  
Kevin's eyes glittered in the patio light. "She's not going to be all right, is she?"  
  
"It's too early to say," Sydney replied frankly. "I don't know. I haven't had much chance to talk to her yet. All she wanted to do was snuggle and feel safe, and so that's what I let her do. She slept for a while - while you and Mr. Ikeda were outside."  
  
"I just want to help too," the young man said sadly. "I..." He looked over at his mentor, his heart in his eyes.  
  
"I know," Sydney soothed, putting out a hand and patting Kevin's shoulder companionably. "And I know you mean well and that you care a great deal. But things are going to have to happen at Deb's speed and not ours, and certainly not all at once. This is going to be a challenging time for all of us - to you in regards to patience at getting your friend back, to me in regards to trying to be an effective therapist for her while being far more emotionally involved than would be considered wise."  
  
"What about another psychiatrist?" Kevin asked cautiously.  
  
Sydney shook his head. "I've already heard from Miss Parker about her problems with the therapist in the hospital in California - she only barely finally began to cooperate just enough to get herself released. I'm afraid that if not me, then the only other person she'll work with willingly is Jarod, and he's three thousand miles away right now."  
  
"What should I do in the morning, then?" The young Pretender was feeling very useless and helpless in the face of the changes in the family dynamics.  
  
"Be yourself, but just be a friend," Sydney suggested firmly. "Don't expect to be able to walk up to her quickly, or that she's going to be her regular, happy-go-lucky self. And most definitely, hugs will have to wait for a while at the very least." He sighed. "I'm probably going to have to be counseling her rather intensely for the time being, so you can keep yourself busy with those archives - or spend some time in the park with Davy, maybe... His school doesn't start for a while yet, and I'm sure he'll be wanting companionship, just like before..."  
  
"What will SHE be doing tomorrow?"  
  
Sydney leaned his chin into his palm and looked out into the nighttime sky. "Other than talking to me part of the day, I'm not exactly sure, Kevin." And that thought brought him no peace whatsoever.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"You say that he wants a Chinese secretary?" Xing-Li asked Mei-Chiang in her musical Cantonese.  
  
"You're supposed to show up at his office an hour or so early tomorrow, so that he can talk to you about the job and get you settled in," Mei-Chiang smiled at the younger woman. "Mr. Tyler is a good man, Younger Sister, NOT like Mr. Lyle at all."  
  
"What do I say to him?" Xing-Li curled up on the sofa that doubled as her bed and stared across the small room at her roommate for the last year. Mei-Chiang was older than she was by at least two years and had always been the more adventurous of the two, the more gregarious with Americans. While Xing-Li's English was good, she didn't feel as confidant of it or her ability to understand everything said to her.  
  
The older woman smiled at her friend gently. "You don't say anything, Younger Sister. You listen and let Mr. Tyler do most of the talking. Then you give your very best to make sure that whatever he asks of you, you do." She reached across the small space to grasp her friend's hand in reassurance. "You can call me if you feel you're getting in over your head - I can at least help you out a little right at first."  
  
"Is... Mr. Tyler's office very far from Miss Parker's?"  
  
"Not at all. I'm just a little way down the hall from you right now." She let her mind wander to the idea that, someday, she would occupy a place of prestige in the new Tower that rumor said would rise from the crumpled debris of the old. "It is an honor to be chosen. It is what the brokers spent all that time and money teaching us how to handle properly."  
  
"Americans frighten me, Older Sister," Xing-Li admitted with a small shudder. "They are SO tall, and their voices are loud..."  
  
"You'll get used to that after a while," Mei-Chiang told her with a smile. "Besides, Mr. Tyler isn't one of the truly tall ones. You're talking about the sweepers - and they are big men for a good reason. They are the warriors." She thought briefly about Sam. Now that Miss Parker was back, perhaps he was back too.   
  
"Won't the American secretary that Mr. Tyler has had be upset?" the tiny woman worried. "She is being demoted..."  
  
"That is Mr. Tyler's worry - not yours," Mei-Chiang stated firmly. "But I suppose that it wouldn't be out of line for you to express some concern about that to Mr. Tyler when you meet with him. Also, don't be surprised if Mr. Tyler asks you questions about your employment here to date. He was a bit surprised to find out how we got our jobs and the terms of our employment."  
  
That made the younger woman feel even less sure of herself. "What do you mean, surprised? Did he not know..."  
  
Mei-Chiang was shaking her head. "Actually, he was quite upset with the whole idea that our services had been purchased in such a way. He said that he was going to bring the matter up with Miss Parker in the morning..."  
  
"Are we both going to lose our jobs?" Xing-Li cried out, worried that not only was she moving into a new position, but one that would end almost as soon as it had begun.  
  
"He says no - that he wants to improve our position for us."  
  
Xing-Li's wide ebony eyes burned holes into those of her friend. "Do you believe him?"  
  
"He seems like a man of his word, Younger Sister - and I'm going to trust that what he said was the truth until I find out otherwise. I think," Mei-Chiang moved from one sofa-bed to the other and put her arm around her more slightly built roommate gently, "you would be wise to do the same."  
  
"I wish that we were still in Hong Kong," Xing-Li huddled against a woman who had, over the course of the last few years, taken the place of her entire family. She'd never had an older sister to watch over her - her older brothers had been more than happy to sell her to the broker when they found out that the money would keep them in cigarettes and dim sum for several months easily. Even so, the culture in this land so far from home was a strange and incomprehensible one - one that intimidated her almost to distraction.  
  
Mei-Chiang held the younger woman close and let her hand rub comforting circles against the silk brocade of her cheongsam. Xing-Li had yet to adapt American fashions and had diligently kept the wardrobe she'd brought from Hong Kong in impeccable repair. "I think we are safer now, here, than we ever would be if we had been sold to a Chinese businessman," she said firmly. "A Chinese would have made concubines or prostitutes of us, and you know that."  
  
"And American men eat us!"  
  
She shook her head. "Not so. Mr. Lyle, I think, was unusual American for his appetites and tastes. I honestly don't think Mr. Tyler or some of the other Americans I've met lately would do such a thing." She patted Xing-Li on the back. "Now, get ready for bed and sleep well, Younger Sister. You have a big day ahead of you tomorrow."  
  
Xing-Li swallowed hard and nodded, then pulled away from Mei-Chiang so that she could carefully and slowly remove one of the beautiful dresses that had come with her from Hong Kong and climb into the soft cotton shift that had also been provided to them as a suitable nightgown. With the cheongsam once more hung carefully in the small closet that she shared with her roommate, she pulled back the covers and crawled miserably between the coarse sheets.   
  
She had no doubt whatsoever that she'd not be getting much sleep tonight at all. She was losing the anonymity that being simply a face in the clerical pool had given her. Feeling much as she had the night before their plane had left Hong Kong for a land thousands of miles away, she curled herself onto her side with her arms around herself, making herself as small as she could.   
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Good evening, Doctor Russell. I hope I didn't call too late..."  
  
"No, no," Jarod told Rizzo. "What can I do for CPS?"  
  
"Well, I was wondering if you would be able to allow us to come inspect your home tomorrow morning at about eight."  
  
Jarod's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "That's a little early, isn't it?"  
  
Rizzo chuckled. "True - but we've discovered that sometimes popping in on a home that early in the morning can uncover some of the most interesting details of life in that home."  
  
"Will it be you coming?"  
  
"Yup - and another colleague of mine. This is pretty standard for an adoption process coming to a close - although how you managed to cut through all the red tape, I'll never know..."  
  
"How do you take your coffee?" Jarod answered then with a smile in his voice.  
  
"Black, thanks," Rizzo chuckled again, appreciating the ease with which his dealings with this psychiatrist had gone the few times they had met. "How's Ginger doing?"  
  
"Fine," Jarod replied. "I think she's actually put on a few pounds since last you saw her, and my mom pointed out today that her pants are starting to look a little short on her."  
  
"Is she talking at all?" Rizzo inquired.  
  
"Not yet," Jarod admitted, "but she's showing signs of thinking about it every once in a while."  
  
"Well, it will be interesting to see what you've managed to accomplish with her in the last week or so," the CPS caseworker informed him. "All of the reports that we got from Mrs. Thatcher were, of course, negative - so if you manage to make good progress with her, it will stand as evidence of lack of quality care in the Thatcher home." Rizzo paused, debating whether he wanted to tell Jarod everything he knew, then decided that the man could use all the help he could get in plumbing the bottom of that little girl's pain to lead her back to a normal life. "Some of the other children have been talking lately too," he said finally. "Seems that Mrs. Thatcher took out most of her frustrations on Ginger - and there were times that this meant physical..."  
  
"No wonder this child was so traumatized by the time I got to her that night," Jarod growled protectively. "Please tell me criminal charges are begin filed against that woman..."  
  
"We are investigating the frequency and severity of any reports of abuse, Doctor," Rizzo assured him somberly. "It would help if you've seen signs of bruising..."  
  
Jarod shook his head. "Do you know how many scars this child wears from what she went through BEFORE she came to the Thatcher's?" he asked angrily. "Didn't you people do a physical exam when you took her away from that..."  
  
"She wouldn't let us touch her after we got her to the shelter," Rizzo reminded Jarod quickly. "Remember the state she was in?"  
  
"Vividly," the Pretender answered in disgust.   
  
"Well," Rizzo said to break the uncomfortable silence that had accompanied that quick answer, "I'll see you in the morning."  
  
"I'll have the coffee pot on for you and your colleague," Jarod reaffirmed, his voice somewhat mollified. "See you tomorrow."  
  
"Good night, Dr. Russell."  
  
"Good night, Mr. Rizzo."  
  
"Who was that?" Margaret asked as she set aside one of Ginger's pairs of pants that she'd just let the hem out to the end on.  
  
"The fellow from Child Protective Services. Seems they want to do a quick home inspection tomorrow morning."  
  
"At eight o'clock?" Margaret gaped at him. "That's a little early, don't you think?"  
  
Jarod nodded. "Then again, if there were something wrong in a household, how much better to find it out than by coming at an odd hour?"  
  
She shot him a questioning look, then reached for another pair of pants. "Do you want me to come?"  
  
"No, that's OK, Mom. You don't have to be here any earlier than you have been lately. I can handle the CPS folks."  
  
"I'm glad Missy was able to speed things up for you, son," Margaret commented as she began carefully running the seam ripper down the line of stitching that held up the hem of the pantleg she was altering. "The sooner that little angel is yours for real, the better."  
  
"I know," he nodded as he adjusted the glasses on his face. "I can't even imagine my life without her in it anymore."  
  
"Do you have to leave RIGHT away, once the adoption is final, though?" Margaret asked with a slightly plaintive tone. "Missy managed to make time for a vacation here - can't you take your time packing?"  
  
Jarod looked over at his mother indulgently. "I do have a rather large job waiting for me in Delaware, you know," he told her in an understanding tone. "And, to be honest, considering that Missy already has a home with all the amenities I'd ever need, all I'd have to pack would be my clothing, books and CDs - and my Pez dispenser collection. Ginger has so little to pack that her stuff won't take much time at all."  
  
Margaret sighed. She could understand the need to be with his love and his son - she'd had the same need drive her actions for years before the family was finally reunited. But she would miss her oldest son. "It won't be the same around here without you, you know," she said softly.  
  
"I know." Jarod delayed picking up the report he'd been studying before the phone call in favor of reaching over and patting his mother's knee. "We'll be back for visits, though, and you'll always have a place with us there..."  
  
"Me? Go back to Delaware?"  
  
"There's nothing to be afraid of back there anymore, Mom," he reassured her firmly. "All the people that had designs on our family are long gone. Missy's in charge of the Centre and is turning it strictly legit. The Triumvirate is out of the picture entirely now."  
  
She glanced up into her son's warm chocolate gaze guiltily. "I just can't help feeling like it's too good to be true. There's gotta be SOMETHING..."  
  
Jarod sighed and then smiled at her as he shook his head. "One day, when you feel like being very daring and adventurous, you'll come - and you'll see that you have nothing to fear."  
  
Margaret's gaze became skeptical before she looked back down to her sewing. "We'll see," she said, shaking her head. "We'll see."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Sam closed and locked his front door behind him, tossing his keys onto the little table near the door with a sigh of comfortable routine finally being re-established. He looked around the little house with no small amount of satisfaction. The time he'd spent in California was the longest period of time he'd spent away from his own home on Centre business in years, and it had made him appreciate what he'd managed to acquire for himself just all that much more.  
  
His house was a small one, nestled into the middle of a working-class neighborhood of small houses, tricycles and swing sets in front yards and clotheslines filled with fresh laundry in back yards. Most of the Centre sweepers tended to rent in one of the larger, Centre-owned apartment complexes on the outskirts of Blue Cove - but not him. He'd found this place soon after his elevation to Miss Parker's personal sweeper and had been patiently paying on his mortgage ever since. Mowing lawns and keeping the leaves raked in the autumn had given a sense of balance to his nerve-wracking career as sweeper, and a haven away from the Centre entirely that he could call his own. It was more than big enough for one person - and with no other family that he wanted to claim or that would want to claim him, it was big enough for him.  
  
He moved to the side of the living room and slipped the casement window open, letting the warm evening air freshen a room that had been closed up far too long for his liking. Sometime tomorrow, probably in the late afternoon, he'd have to go to the Blue Cove Post Office and pick up his collection of mail - after calling and getting his newspaper re-established too. Atlee Manor, as he sometimes sarcastically thought of his little abode, was back in business.  
  
He'd already taken a quick trip out to the Centre, traded in the Centre limousine for his own car and checked in with the on-duty security staff to make it clear that all emergency calls should come to his home again and not to Harrison's. Chip was a good man - but when it came to the security of the Centre now that he was back, the buck stopped HERE, on Alder St. now. What he'd seen as he'd driven up the long drive past the old Tower site had been very encouraging. The change over the span of a little over a week was amazing - courtesy of round-the-clock construction work.  
  
Already the thick cement slab had been poured that would be the ground-floor foundation for the new two-story Tower, and some of the steel I-beams and wooden forms for re-bar and cement columns that would be the support skeleton for the second floor were rising into the air. Most importantly, as far as Centre operations were concerned, the solid steel above ground bunker that would eventually serve as the new Tower's foyer had been constructed. The sub-level workers were now completely protected from the construction that was going on all around them as they moved from outdoors to the elevators that would carry them to their workstations below ground.   
  
For now, however, he was content to drape his sports coat over the back of his favorite easy chair, loosen his tie and unbutton the top button of his dress shirt to make himself comfortable. He headed back toward the kitchen and the refrigerator for one of the beers he'd bought nearly two weeks since. Tonight he would celebrate his homecoming - and the fact that he still had a job to go to in the morning. When he'd left, he'd been certain that his return would have been to the prospect of having to find new employment somewhere else. He'd never thought that hearing Miss Parker announce that he couldn't quit because the Centre "owned him" would have sounded so good.  
  
He pulled the glass arcadia door open and then the screen door and out onto the unlit patio slab. He took a long drink from his beer bottle and felt himself relaxing - truly relaxing - for the first time in a very long time, it seemed. The problems of the week before were like a nightmare remembered, and the problems of the day to come nothing but whispers on the wind. For the time being, he could breathe in deeply of the fresh air of the little village and enjoy the peace and silence that surrounded him. He tipped the bottle up to his lips and drained the rest of the beverage thirstily.   
  
He stood still for another long moment, then turned to go back into the house. He locked the glass arcadia door and put the amber bottle into his trash, then looked over at his answering machine on the counter. Not surprisingly, there were only three messages left on the machine in the entire time he'd been gone. He pushed the replay button, curious about who would have called, knowing that he'd probably not return any of the calls until tomorrow morning at the earliest.  
  
The first was one of those annoying automated messages that he got constantly when the person who'd called hung up before the machine had a chance to finish its outgoing message. He hit the delete button just as the operator's smooth voice was saying "If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and dial again..." to move to the next message. That one was from a telemarketer seeking people interested in selling their home or buying another. With a frustrated grunt he stabbed at the delete button again.  
  
The third, however, brought a smile to his face. It was Mei-Chiang. "I know that you're not home yet, but I wanted to leave you a message for when you DO get home to say that I'm glad you're back. I look forward to seeing you in the morning."  
  
He left that message still blinking on the machine and walked back to the front of the house to reclaim his small suitcase from where he'd left it by the little table next to the door. All the way to his bedroom, his face was soft as he finally allowed himself to contemplate the fact that he would actually be able to collect on the dinner invitation that he'd made to her before kidnappings and treachery had pulled him away from the Centre annex.  
  
Briefly he toyed with the idea of seeing whether the security on duty at the Centre had a telephone number for her - then abandoned it with the strength of the yawn that followed his turning on his bedroom light. He was too tired, and wouldn't be able to hold up his end of a decent conversation without getting a good night's sleep in his own bed. There would be time enough in the morning to get her phone number directly from her - not to mention make arrangements for finally taking her out to that dinner after all.   
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Deb jerked awake, forcing herself back into the world of a bedroom dimly lit by a small lamp at the side of her bed with a dark blouse thrown over it to make it a nightlight. She could still feel the tendrils of her nightmare reaching out to her - the feel of that man's hands on her, touching her... She shuddered and sat up straight. Tonight's nightmare had taken its setting from her return home - her attacker had come at her from the darkness of one of the corners in this very room and overpowered her. She HAD to get out of here!  
  
She slipped from the bed without bothering to look for slippers or a robe to put on over her thin polyester nightgown, intent on darting down the hall, down the stairs and to the den to Grandpa. She felt safe when he was close for some reason, and the way the nightmare had taken her comfortable room at Grandpa's house and turned it into a place of horror made her anxious to find that feeling of safety and haven once more.  
  
She threw open the bedroom door and turned the corner - then skidded to a stop in surprise. Sitting on his heels in the middle of the upstairs hallway, his back to the bedroom doors and facing the stairs, was a Japanese man. Her appearance behind him didn't cause him any surprise, he merely turned and gazed evenly at her over his shoulder - in the darkness, his eyes black holes.  
  
It took a moment for her to remember that Grandpa had mentioned that he would have the new bodyguard, a Mr... Mr... she couldn't remember the name ... take up watch outside her door to make her feel safer. She hadn't thought about it at the time, but here was proof that he'd meant what he'd said - that he HAD set a guard outside her room to keep her safe from anybody who would want to intrude on her in the night.  
  
Ikeda eyed the pale, blonde girl patiently. Obviously she hadn't expected to find him there - and equally obviously, she wasn't sure whether to be frightened by him or not. "Are you all right?" he asked in a soft voice without moving.  
  
Slowly the blonde head nodded as the girl backed into her own doorjamb nervously. "I just wanted..."  
  
That's when Ikeda began to see the signs of terror having visited the girl recently in her stance and her voice. Green-san had spent the better part of the early evening with this pretty dove of a granddaughter nestled into his arms protectively - and although he hadn't said much about exactly what it was that the girl had survived, Green-san's attitude had been one of severe worry. "Do you wish to go downstairs?" he asked the girl gently. "Do you need me to get out of your way?"  
  
Deb put up a hand to cling to the doorjamb for support. She wanted her Grandpa desperately now - things were NOT the same here as they had been before she'd been taken! To find this soft-spoken man kneeling in the hallway just outside her door was downright unnerving - to have him discern her wishes with so little effort was embarrassing. Even if he was up there to guard her safety...  
  
Ikeda didn't rise to his feet at all - he simply shifted and moved to the side of the hallway. "There," he said gently to the frightened young woman. "You can get past easily now. But..." he looked at her with the air of someone who knew what they were talking about, "you may want to take a blanket with you - and put on a robe. It can get cold in the den at night."  
  
Deb's eyes widened. This stranger really DID know what she intended. She ducked back into her room and threw on her terry-cloth robe without buttoning it. She then snatched the bedspread from her bed and rolled it up carelessly before peeking back out of her bedroom door. Ikeda was still sitting on his heels against the wall, out of the way. "Th...thanks," she muttered and slid along the opposite wall to get past the Japanese bodyguard and then move quickly down the stairs.  
  
She moved through the darkened house by memory, avoiding the dining table on her way to the back of the house and the den. Finally she stood in the doorway from the kitchen to the den, the sound of her grandfather's soft snoring filling her ears with security. She moved slowly now, debating on whether or not she wanted to find a spot on the floor next to the daybed or a more comfortable one in the recliner. She opted for the spot on the floor close to her Grandpa and moved the coffee table covered with file folders and papers back to make room for herself as soundlessly as she could.  
  
The floor was hard under her backside, but she didn't care. She pulled the bedspread up beneath her chin and squirmed to get it tucked around her shoulders before turning her body to the daybed and laying her head down on the quilt covering the cushion near her grandfather's hip.   
  
Sydney shifted and roused when his blanket seemed to be pinned down. He looked down the length of his body in the dim light and saw that there was a blonde head holding the quilt in place. He pulled his hand out from beneath the quilt and very gently stroked the hair back from her face, bringing the eyes open again. "What's the matter?" he asked softly.  
  
"Nightmare," she answered briefly. "I got scared."  
  
His hand stayed at her head, cradling her against his hip, while hers came up and hung onto the forearm tightly. He shifted and rolled slightly toward her to the extent that he didn't make his knee begin to ache. "What was it?" he asked finally, taking a chance that she still remembered the particulars of her dream.  
  
"He came into my room..."  
  
"Your room here?"   
  
Her head nodded beneath his hand. "I couldn't move - and he started touching me..."  
  
"Is that when you woke up?"  
  
She shook her head. "I tried to call to you, to call to Kevin, but you didn't come because I couldn't make a sound." Her voice became broken. "Grandpa, how long will I have to remember?"  
  
Sydney's hand stroked her gently. "Until you move on in life, cheri. Right now, you're stuck in that horrible moment in time - and it's beginning to define the way you look at yourself and others."  
  
"I don't want that," she said with a hitch.  
  
"I know you don't, ma petite. You'll have to work very hard to learn NOT to live every moment of your life in fear of that one moment coming back at you. Not everyone around you is going to hurt you, or touch you inappropriately. You really are much safer than you want to believe right now..."  
  
"But how do I get out of being stuck? I don't know how to do that..."   
  
"We'll talk about that in the morning, Debbie. Right now, you need your sleep and so do I. So..."  
  
"Don't make me go back up to bed, Grandpa," she clung to his forearm just a bit tighter. "I'm afraid I'll just go right back into the nightmare..."  
  
"No, no, I wouldn't make you go back upstairs now," he soothed. "But you'd probably have a much better sleep in that recliner over there than on the hard floor here. And I'll be right here if you get afraid again." He felt her raise her head. "Go on and settle down in the recliner. Getting yourself sleep-deprived on top of everything else right now is not a good idea - and I'll need fresh wits about me to help you tomorrow too."  
  
"OK." He felt her hands drop away from his forearm. He stroked her hair one more time and then moved his hand away so that she could make her way to her feet again. "Thank you, Grandpa," she said, bending over him and somehow managing to drop a kiss on his cheek in the darkness.  
  
"Goodnight, cheri. No more nightmares, now - remember, I'm right here," he soothed up at her softly.   
  
Deb took a deep breath and moved around the coffee table in the direction of the recliner. Once she was seated and had both the footrest up in place and her bedspread covering her, she had to admit that Grandpa was right that it was a far more comfortable place to sleep than on the floor.   
  
"Close your eyes now, cheri," Sydney modulated his voice into hypnotic tones. "They are so heavy already, you know. It's been a long time since you felt safe enough to relax entirely, but that time has come. All the tension is flowing from your muscles, and you feel limp like a wet dishrag. Your eyelids are so heavy that you can't keep them open anymore. Your body needs a good night's rest, free from dreams and fears, and that is what you will have tonight. You feel safe and secure, and you can relax and let yourself fall into a deep, restful sleep. At the count of three, you will take a deep breath and be fast asleep. And in the morning, you will awaken refreshed and feeling better than you have in days. One... Two... Three!"  
  
Across the darkened room, he heard her take a deep breath and let it out slowly. After waiting a few minutes to make sure that Deb's breathing was deep and regular in sleep, and with a satisfied sigh of his own, he rolled himself back onto his back. Within a few minutes, he too was softly snoring - and the house was quiet again.  
  
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com 


	5. Reestablishing Connections

(Author's note: I am resuming the posting of this and the rest of my Pretender stories on FFN after a long hiatus. To those who have read this before, I hope you enjoy seeing it again. To those who are new, enjoy! My personal site evidently is no more - and unexpectedly so. So FFN will be where MMB's complete works will be found. -MMB)

Re-establishing Connections

by MMB

Tyler downed the final gulp of his coffee from Oggie's and slipped the key into the lock of his office door. Already it was promising to be another stiflingly hot day, so he had his sports coat draped over one arm as he headed for his desk and a place where he could drop his briefcase and wait for the day to get started properly. He hit the button on the oscillating fan on the file cabinet near his desk and then sat down, hoping that when the Tower was rebuilt, part of the amenities of the job would include functional air conditioning. Then again, maybe he should call the maintenance man again to see what happened to his last request two days ago for the system to be overhauled…

"Mr. Tyler?"

He looked up to see Mei-Chiang's face peeking around the edge of his door. "Come on in," he said, gesturing for her to come into the office.

Mei-Chiang turned and pulled and, as she stepped through the door, brought a slimmer, tinier woman into the room with her. Clad in a more traditional cheongsam and with waist-length jet-black hair pulled back at her neck and hanging down her back, her companion looked almost more like a child out of an imported movie than an adult that worked at the Centre. "This is Ping Xing-Li," Mei-Chiang introduced formally. "Xing-Li, this is Mr. Tyler. As I told you last night, he wants to speak with you about a new job…"

"Sit down," Tyler gestured at the chairs in front of his desk and then watched as the tiny Chinese woman nervously sat down on the very edge of the chair he'd indicated. "Did Mei-Chiang explain to you why I wanted to see you?"

"Yes, sir," Xing-Li's English was as musically accented as her compatriot's, but her voice was softer, more hesitant.

"I'm looking for someone to do for me what Mei-Chiang is doing for Miss Parker – see to it that I don't miss appointments, be my liaison with some of the other department heads, sometimes just cheer me up or keep me from taking myself too seriously. Being able to type and take dictation would be a plus." He watched the small face as he listed off what he was looking for. "Do you think you're up to the challenge?"

Xing-Li looked at her prospective boss with surprise. Unlike Mr. Lyle, when that one had come to select the cadre of 'clerical workers,' Mr. Tyler had made NO mention of more personal, intimate, duties. "You want just a secretary?" she asked in hesitant surprise.

Tyler exchanged a glance with Mei-Chiang, who was still standing near the door to the office with an understanding look on her face. He didn't want to think of what kind of other duties she had been told to expect to be asked of her when she had been 'purchased.' The thought of that kind of servitude being practiced anywhere within his knowledge was still enough to make the hackles rise on the back of his neck. "Was there something else that you expected to be part of your duties?" he asked back with a cocked eyebrow.

Xing-Li looked down at her hands in her lap. "No, sir," she replied shyly. Perhaps Older Sister was right, and this man wouldn't be thinking of making a meal of her in the near future.

"Good. And I'm assuming that you can start today?"

"Yes, sir," she replied again. She studied her new boss shyly. He seemed to be a very well mannered man in the Chinese sense of the word, and was even more polite to women than she would have ever hoped to see. "Do you wish me to start now?"

"Absolutely!" Tyler rose and stretched out his hand to her. Xing-Li flinched back at the large movement but then bravely swallowed her fear and rose as well, eventually putting her hand in his in this unfamiliar gesture of agreement. Tyler frowned at the idea that someone may have frightened his pretty young secretary so badly. "Y'all listen to me," he told her firmly, keeping a tight hold on her hand for the moment. "I don't know what anybody has told to you to expect, or what anybody has ever done to you in the past. But I want you to know that I have no intentions of ever hurting you or letting anybody else hurt you either. If someone threatens you, I want you to tell me about it, do you understand?"

"Mr. Tyler, sir…"

"No. I want you to do that from now on." He shook his head vigorously. "Mei-Chiang told me a few things about the way you got this job. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the both of you are here NOW – but I don't approve at all of the way you got here or the way either of you have been treated up until now. So let me put our working relationship in terms we both can live with, OK?"

Now he had her entire attention. Intelligent ebony eyes that were wide with astonishment and respect were watching his every move. He glanced up one last time at Mei-Chiang with a nod, grateful to see that she, too, was listening closely. "Having you as my secretary does NOT give me the right to ask for anything other than assistance with Centre business – you do not have to take care of my personal affairs or business, nor can I demand your time to keep me company after business hours. Some of the things I've heard about Mr. Lyle…"

Xing-Li could see from his expression that Older Sister was right – Mr. Tyler definitely did not have the same tastes and expectations that Mr. Lyle had. "I understand, sir," she said, feeling just a little more comfortable and safe with her new employer. "I appreciate the reassurance, however."

"Good," Tyler breathed easier, seeing that she was already beginning to relax a little with him. "Now, let me send the poor lady who has been less than effective at her job than I would have liked back to the clerical pool while you go back there and retrieve any personal items that you'd prefer to have at your desk here from now on, OK?"

That earned him his first, hesitant smile. "Yes, sir," she agreed easily. "Thank you, sir."

He looked back up at Mei-Chiang one last time. "And thank you for helping me out in this way. I owe you one."

"It was my pleasure, Mr. Tyler," the older Chinese woman said in her own musically accented voice. "And now, I should get to my desk before Miss Parker gets here. I like to be at my post when she arrives."

"What time is it anyway?" Tyler looked at his wristwatch. "Definitely, you'll need to make tracks. You too," he told Xing-Li, "only I want you back here in about a half hour, trying to make sense of the mess that my previous secretary made of my appointment calendar. Will that be possible?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Sam! Welcome back!" Tyler's voice came at the ex-sweeper from the hallway behind him.

"Hey there," Sam smiled back. "You look as if keeping the Centre running smoothly didn't bother you at all." He pointed. "No new grey hair."

Tyler swatted at the finger. "Well, while things weren't quite as desperate as they were last week, we had plenty to keep us on our toes."

"Oh?" Sam sounded both interested and concerned.

"Yeah. But let's wait until Chip and Miss Parker are here before we get into that."

The two men continued to move down the hallway toward the end office and the Chinese secretary that sat guarding the door. "Is she in?" Tyler asked Mei-Chiang.

"She arrived about five minutes ago, sir," she replied, her gaze drawn almost immediately to Sam's face. "Good to see you again, sir."

"You go on, I'll be along in just a minute," Sam told the younger Southerner, his eyes not leaving Mei-Chiang.

Tyler began to smile and patted Sam on the back. "Anything you say," he drawled knowingly and then moved past the desk and through the door.

"I got your message," Sam told her gently. "That was very thoughtful of you – and so nice to come home to. Thanks."

"I meant what I said," she replied in a soft tone meant not to carry very far. "I'm very glad to see you back."

He leaned over her desk slightly. "I seem to remember something about inviting you to go to dinner with me before things got crazy around here." She nodded with a soft smile and a slight blush. "Now that things are calming down a bit, maybe we can make some definite plans…"

"Whenever," she told him shyly. "I am usually just at home when I finish working…"

"Tonight?"

She looked up at him in surprise, and then smiled more widely at him. "If you'd like…"

"You get a say in this too," he reminded her gently.

"I know," she nodded. "Tonight would be fine. What time?"

Sam thought for a moment. "How about I pick you up at about seven at your place?"

"That sounds good." She tipped her head in the direction of the office door. "You'd better get on in there," she urged softly. "I can see Mr. Harrison coming down the hallway already."

"I'll get directions to your place when I'm done with the meeting," he announced firmly.

"I'll write them out for you," Mei-Chiang told him, giving Chip Harrison a brief wave.

Sam followed his assistant through the office door to find Miss Parker and Tyler already drinking coffee and talking. "So," he began, taking his seat next to Miss Parker, "how did things go while we were gone?"

Tyler and Harrison exchanged a glance. "I think we have trouble brewing," Tyler announced in a serious tone. "While you were gone, I had three visits from military representatives looking for me to restart their canceled projects while you weren't paying attention."

Miss Parker shook her head. "I hope you told them to take a long hike off a short pier," she said sharply.

"I told them that if they wanted to talk to you about reconsidering your decision, they were more than welcome to make an appointment to come back in," Tyler answered dryly. "Not all of them appreciated how dedicated you were to having things go through proper and legitimate channels anymore."

Sam shrugged. "We knew that several of those fellows were going to have their epaulettes tweaked out of shape over this," he stated simply, reminding all of them of conversations that they'd held on the matter quite a while earlier, when the original decisions had been make.

"Yeah, and we even anticipated that some would try to do an end-run around Centre authority and try to contact our scientific staff directly," Harrison added, equally dryly.

"And they have?" Miss Parker's brows folded together in concern. "Already?"

"I got a call and a mini-tape from Dr. Mitchell in Pharmaceuticals yesterday. Seems she got a call from a Colonel Stiller, asking to restart a project known as Veracity…"

"THAT thing!" Miss Parker was instantly on edge. "That was one of the most repugnant projects of the lot – a hallucinogen that would be lethal in high enough doses and invasive enough to make anyone given even a tiny dose susceptible to suggestion and brain-washing."

"Well, from what Stiller said on the tape, he was willing to offer Dr. Mitchell money for starting up the project in one of the unused labs – AND the possibility for continuing to earn under-the-table money for making herself available for further covert projects as time went by." Harrison looked thoroughly disgusted. "He did the most blatant and bogus appeal to patriotism I've heard since I was visited by a Naval recruiter. A lot of crap about a 'grateful country' and all that…"

"And did SHE tell this Stiller to stuff it?" Sam wanted to know.

Tyler smiled coldly. "She did better than that. She asked him to call her at her home tomorrow to get her answer. I'm thinking that we could set up a tap on the line and a tracer – and get in contact with Air Force officials who would be Stiller's superiors at the Pentagon to listen in on the conversation."

Miss Parker's smile was equally cold, and she was nodding in agreement. "I like it, I like it a lot. We keep our noses clean by simply reporting suspicious activities of military officials to the proper authorities." She leaned her chin into her hand. "I worry, though, that there might be other staff members a little less loyal than Dr. Mitchell. We canceled about thirty projects, you know."

"We may need to consider instituting a little more stringent security measures," Sam found himself suggesting, much to his own displeasure. "NOT as tight or as invasive as those the Centre had in place all those years, but certainly sufficient to make sure that unused labs do not get quietly co-opted to house research the Centre doesn't want any part of anymore."

"We could reinstall the cameras in those labs that aren't being used anymore," Harrison suggested immediately. "The wiring is still in place, and the cameras themselves were just retired into warehouses…"

"I like that," Miss Parker nodded enthusiastically. "It's your idea, see that it's implemented by the end of the day – use sweeper personnel to get it done if there aren't enough electrical wizards around to handle the job. Sam," she turned to her Security Chief, "might as well find out how many labs we're talking about now, and see to it that we have enough monitors set up in a central security location for each lab."

"I'll get a hold of the Air Force liaison to the Pentagon and have him either come or send someone over to be present to listen to the tap on Dr. Mitchell's phone tonight," Tyler piped up. "Did we keep ANY records on these projects at all?"

"Technically speaking, no," Miss Parker hedged. "However, we still haven't purged Broots' computer of all the files that were what we reconstructed the Centre mainframe with. I can have…" She stopped. Damn. Jarod was still in California. "I can have Kevin sort through the database and see what he can pull up on any of them. We also have the hard-copy archives that Sydney and Kevin are slowly sorting through. There's a chance that part of the documentation had been set aside there too. We gave the Pentagon everything we KNEW about at the time – that doesn't mean they got absolutely everything."

"Not to mention that maybe Dr. Mitchell might have held back some of her research notes on the project – especially those things that she considered might be able to be used a little more beneficially," Harrison theorized. "Considering how angry she was at the idea that she could be bribed into working contrary to Centre policies, we might be able to talk her into making copies of them for us."

"I wouldn't hold your breath," Sam felt he needed to put the brakes on the rampant optimism filling the room. "Finding anything in the hard-copy archives is going to take a lot of time. Then there is the consideration that we asked all the scientists involved in those projects to hand over all their notes. Finding out that they DIDN'T do as requested probably isn't something they want us to do."

"Let's just deal with what we have to work with for the time being," Miss Parker directed. "We get additional security set up in the unused sections of the Centre, we get the Pentagon informed as to what some of their underlings are up to, and we just see where that leads us." The three others in the room nodded agreement. "Good. Then if there isn't anything else…"

"I have something I need to talk to you about," Tyler raised a finger. "But I don't think that it's anything that Sam or Chip need to concern themselves with."

"I'll meet you back in your office in about ten minutes," Sam told his assistant. "I have to talk to someone first. You go find out what we did with all those cameras we uninstalled about a month ago."

Tyler and Miss Parker waited patiently for the two security men to leave the room, and then Miss Parker looked over at her assistant curiously. "What is it that you didn't want to discuss in front of them?"

"It has to do with your secretary," Tyler began lamely. "Were you aware of how Mei-Chiang and the others who came with her came to be here at the Centre in the first place?"

She shook her head. "All I know was that Lyle was the one who made the arrangements to bring them over." She shot him a sharp glance when she saw that he was very serious, very uncomfortable. "Why?"

"Then you weren't aware that they were essentially PURCHASED by the Centre?"

That stunned her. "Pur… Lyle BOUGHT them?"

Tyler was nodding in satisfaction. Her muted explosion at the facts of the matter confirmed that she really had known nothing about this beforehand. Now he didn't feel badly at all about addressing the issue head-on. "And, considering some of the stories I've heard about your brother…"

"He wasn't my brother," she hissed quickly. "Not really."

Tyler shrugged. "Still, considering some of the stories, one can only speculate what all these women were purchased to do for him…"

Miss Parker's face was decidedly sour. "Oh, that's disgusting — even for Lyle!" She shuddered and pushed the button on her intercom. "Mei-Chiang, could you come in here for a moment, please?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Miss Parker rose and turned to look out the window at the construction site. "How on earth did you find out…"

"I decided that I needed a secretary at least as talented as yours — so I asked Mei-Chiang if she knew of another Chinese lady down in clerical…"

There was a knock on the office door, and then Mei-Chiang slipped her head through. "You wanted to speak to me, ma'am?"

"Come in," Miss Parker gestured with a wave. "Sit down. Tyler is just telling me something very disturbing about the terms of your employment here?"

Mei-Chiang moved to the indicated chair with some hesitation, shooting Tyler a slightly wary look. "Yes?"

"Is it true?" Miss Parker put to her bluntly. "Did Lyle actually BUY you?"

"He purchased my services, yes," the Chinese woman admitted softly. "He went through a broker…"

Miss Parker waved her hand back and forth. "The details aren't important at the moment. What IS important is just…" She stared at Tyler dumbfounded. "I don't even know how to ask the proper questions — this is incredible! I had always thought that he'd promised all kinds of things to sweet-talk women into coming to Delaware, and THEN he'd…"

"Miss Parker, I tried to tell Mr. Tyler yesterday that I'm not unhappy now," Mei-Chiang spoke up for herself carefully. "I have a place I can call my own, food in my stomach, I spend my day working with interesting people…"

"For what?" Miss Parker sat down at her desk and looked at her prized secretary in deep concern. "You do at least get paid, don't you?"

"A small stipend," Mei-Chiang said with a nod. "But I also get my room and board included…"

"Where?"

"She says there's a small apartment complex here on the Centre grounds…" Tyler began.

"No." Miss Parker started shaking her head. "That won't do. That simply WON'T do. I can't have you working for me at a mere subsistence wage." She looked at her secretary in amazement. "My God, Mei-Chiang, you could go to New York or Boston and be making VERY good money doing what you're doing for me — and considering the pittance you've been getting here to date, I wouldn't blame you if you did. You are worth far more than just room and board in a tiny little hole in the wall and enough to buy yourself a new blouse or new pair of shoes every once in a while…"

"What I want to know…" Tyler inserted when Miss Parker finally stopped to take a breath, "is how many more like you are there in the clerical pool? I know Xing-Li is in the same boat…"

"Xing-Li?" Miss Parker's face folded into confusion. "Who's that?"

"MY new Chinese secretary," Tyler announced with pride. "Never let it be said that a Sir Edmond lets himself be outdone by a mere Lobsang…"

She blinked in astonishment, then shook her mind free of the cobwebs. "Mei-Chiang, how many more of the group Lyle…" She couldn't say it. "How many of you are there?"

The almond eyes were sad. "There are only the two of us left now, Miss Parker."

"And how many came over with you in the first place?"

"Six."

"Damn!" Miss Parker stared at Tyler in dismay. "How long ago did you come to the US?"

"Almost a year and half." Mei-Chiang shook her head. "Please understand, Miss Parker, that I wouldn't want to take a job in New York or Boston. I am very happy here."

"And I intend to make sure that I keep you happy." Miss Parker looked over at Tyler with determination in her gaze. "I want to speak to the bookkeeper in charge of payroll as of yesterday. Mei-Chiang, I would like to schedule a meeting with you and this Xing-Li to review your salaries and benefits package early this afternoon — say a two o'clock. I have a feeling you both are just about due for a VERY hefty wage increase."

The cautious smile that started to tweak Mei-Chiang's lips was enough to make Miss Parker certain that she was doing the right thing and righting yet another one of Lyle's many, hideous wrongs.

"Tyler, you have your work cut out for you over the next few — Mei-Chiang, right now I need you to arrange for a meeting with all the key staff in the Pharmaceutical and Chemical departments for late this afternoon — around four-thirty."

"Yes, ma'am," the two said, getting to their feet.

"Thank you, Miss Parker," Mei-Chiang added softly.

"Thank me after we've had our meeting," Miss Parker told her with a knowing smile. "Now go on. We all have work to do…"

"So, Harry, what's the news from your end of the world?" Senator George Canfield clapped a hand on his colleague as they walked down the hallway to a caucus meeting.

"We're working on re-establishing a few contacts we lost a little while ago," Senator Burns said in a casual manner, knowing full well that Canfield was well aware of recent developments in their quiet efforts to boost military defense despite the political, legal and moral hesitancy of the current administration.

"How's that going?" Canfield's hand caught at Burns' shoulder and pulled him to the side of the corridor so they could talk without obstructing other foot traffic in the building. "I hear the new Chairman at the Centre is a real Puritan when it comes to the projects she's continuing."

"Yes, well," Burns smiled coldly, "I have some of my military contacts working on going around her on as many of those projects she canceled as we can get. And should that not work…"

The thick, black eyebrows of the Senator from Montana rose. "What can you do if subterfuge doesn't work?"

"Institute an investigation into Centre legal and financial dealings, with major emphasis on underworld connections," the Floridan said with a shrug. "The Centre has been playing footsie for too long with all sorts of unsavory partners. Having that fact exposed in public hearings won't be good for their bottom line — and the Centre will come back, hat in hand, asking us to back off just to keep themselves solvent."

"Be careful, Harry," Canfield warned. "Getting Federal agencies involved in an investigation could backfire on us. We don't need…"

"I have a friend over at the FBI that would be thrilled to put the Centre under a microscope," Burns reassured his colleague quickly. "He's suspected the Centre of any number of illicit dealings and outright violations of trade agreements and RICO statutes for years — he'd jump at the chance to nail their asses to the ground."

"I'd rather see you find other, smaller R&D firms to take over the work on those projects than pit everything we've worked so hard for against the Centre," Canfield told him urgently. "This isn't a game we're playing — we don't do grudge matches unless we're SURE we'll win."

"Do you honestly think the Centre would be able to out-flimflam the American Government, George?" Burns asked, astounded at his friend's attitude.

"I don't want to take anything for granted around this town," Canfield told him, poking a finger into the fabric of the expensive suit for emphasis. "The rest of the committee is just as concerned that we don't overplay our hand with the Centre too. You push your military flunkies to do what they can, and we'll have to see what happens for the rest of it."

Burns seethed. He was the Chairman of that quiet and extra-curricular Pre-emptive Defense committee, damn it — and he didn't take getting pushed around by the majority of the other members lightly. "You tell those chickens that I'm handling things," he retorted, punching Canfield's suit with a finger in return, "and to lay off me. The Centre can't do anything against us."

"Except expose us," Canfield countered darkly, "and expose our work."

"They have nothing," Burns insisted. "You know that…"

"No," Canfield looked his colleague in the eye, "we don't. And what we DO know is that the new Chairman at the Centre is doing a damned good job of defending her new policies from inside challenges at the administrative levels – AND that the Centre has other friends here within the Beltway than just our little group. YOU watch what you say and who you say it to," he warned in a soft and dangerous tone. "You know as well as I that there are several involved in this that won't take the slightest mistake well."

Burns blinked. "Are you threatening me, George?"

"No," the Floridan shook his head. "Just reminding you that the stakes involved are just as personal on this end as they are at the Centre."

"I don't need to be reminded," Burns snapped. "You just keep those chicken-hawks from squawking so loudly that they start calling attention to themselves, and let me handle the Centre." He turned his back on his colleague and headed for the meeting room in which the caucus would be meeting in just a few minutes.

Canfield shook his head and watched the Florida Senator walk away. The unofficial ad-hoc Defense committee was right to be concerned about Burns' attitude. More than one of them had the kind of connections to be very aware of how the Centre had dealt with the administrators within the Centre itself who had seen fit to try to force the Centre to stay with old policies and procedures. Burns' arrogance and self-assuredness were valuable tools when things were going well, but they could well turn into dangerous drawbacks in these delicate times.

He would have to call a meeting of the committee when he finished his legislative day and report on this meeting. And as he thought about it, he began to smile. Perhaps Burns' attitude and behavior itself could become an advantage to turn against the Centre. He glanced down the hallway at the doorway to the meeting room. He'd need some time to think this through, but he may just have found that perfect way to bring the Centre back to the fold, hat in hand and pleading to be taken out of the limelight.

Jarod opened the door to let Rizzo and an older woman into his home. Rizzo looked about the place appreciatively. "You really do have a nice home, Doctor," he commented easily. "This is Caroline Sanchez, my associate at CPS. She's the one who will try to have an interview with Ginger this morning. Where is she this morning?"

"Still eating breakfast," Jarod replied. Actually, he was just as glad that the little girl had reined in her curiosity at the sound of the doorbell in favor of filling her stomach with breakfast cereal – he wasn't sure how the sight of the man that had taken her away from Mrs. Thatcher and, by all accounts, had been responsible for placing her in that locked juvenile facility would affect the girl.

When it was obvious that both CPS workers were waiting for him to lead the way, Jarod gestured in the direction of the kitchen and led the way down the short hallway and through the door.

Ginger looked up and smiled widely with her mouth filled with cereal as He walked back into the kitchen, but then the smile evaporated as she caught sight of the man who was coming into the kitchen behind Him. It was That Man – the one who had picked her up bodily and carried her into that horrible Little Room with no escape! She looked up at Him with pleading eyes and a small whimper. What had she done wrong?

"Hello there," Rizzo said gently to the girl, not failing to notice how, when she realized who had come, had immediately started looking to Dr. Russell for reassurance and safety. "How are you today?"

Ginger forced herself to finish chewing her food enough to be able to swallow without choking. She put down the spoon and dropped her hands into her lap. If That Man thought that she fought him the last time he'd tried to pick her up, just WAIT until he tried to take her away from Him!

"Let me try," Caroline put a hand on her colleague's arm and moved in front of him to crouch near the child's chair. "Hello, my name is Caroline. What's yours?"

Ginger stared at the woman distrustfully and then turned wide and frightened eyes to her guardian. What was going on here?

Jarod moved to the other side of the table and sat down – close enough that, should she decide to flee, he could catch her before she got very far. "They just wanted to see how you were doing and make sure you were happy here, Sprite," he told her gently. "It's part of the stuff we all have to do to make sure that you can stay with me from now on."

Rizzo watched with amazement as much of the fright slowly faded from the little girl's face to be replaced with simple wary distrust. He pulled a photograph from his pocket and gazed first at it and then at the child, marveling at the difference a single week had made.

Ginger's face was no longer gaunt or pale – she actually had the beginnings of a healthy tan and her cheeks were filling nicely. Her hair was neatly braided into a single queue down her back, and her shirt was worn but clean. "Do you think you can stand up for me?" he asked, then glanced over at Jarod. "It would help if I could see her standing…"

"Stand up, sweetheart," he directed gently. "He won't hurt you, I promise."

Ginger's eyes flicked from her guardian's face to that of That Man, then she slipped slowly from her chair and moved to the edge of the table.

Rizzo could then see that the little girl had indeed put on some weight, which she'd needed to do desperately when he'd released her to Dr. Russell's custody a week ago. He could also see from the way that she kept looking at her guardian that the man had become the very center of this child's whole world. Every time her eyes touched Dr. Russell's face, the entire expression became soft, clearly adoring.

"So can you tell me if you're happy here?" he asked from his crouch, choosing to neither rise to his full height or in any way do anything that she might find intimidating.

Ginger nodded somberly, slipping along the edge of the table until she could put down a hand on His thigh. When she felt His hand cover hers, she began to feel just a little more safe – maybe she hadn't done anything wrong after all!

"Can you show me your room?" Caroline invited, holding her hand out to the little girl.

Ginger backed away from the hand immediately and flinched into Jarod's side in obvious need of reassurance and comfort.

"She has focused all of her insecurities on female authority figures," Jarod explained to the CPS workers after putting an arm around his child. "It isn't all that surprising – her mother was the one who did most of the cigarette burns, her first foster mother is seen as knowing and permitting the foster father to molest her, and Mrs. Thatcher…"

"I can understand that, I suppose," Caroline rose, nodding. "I still need to see the child's bedroom and try to talk to her without you being present," she explained apologetically.

Jarod nodded and smoothed his hand across Ginger's back. "I really need you to show this lady your room, Sprite – and she's going to want to talk to you a little bit. But I'll be right outside, in the living room, if you get scared, OK?"

Ginger shook her head vigorously and pressed herself into her guardian. This was a Stranger – there was no way that she was going to go ANYWHERE with a Stranger!

"Even if I promise that I won't do anything to hurt you?" Caroline tried again.

The little girl shuddered and pressed into Jarod even harder. How many times had she had promises thrown at her that The Quiet Man wouldn't hurt her if she went with him – only to find out when she'd done as she was told that she was in for another one of those evenings where he did nothing BUT hurt her. She looked up into His face with outright terror in her eyes.

"I have an idea," Jarod said after noting that the caseworker's patience was beginning to grow thin and thinking about it for a little while. "Ginger's room is the first door on the left as you go down the hall past the living room. Why don't you go on down there, and then Mr. Rizzo and I will bring her to you and leave her in the hallway. She can see me, but I'll be far enough away that I won't be hearing what you ask her or interfering in any way."

Rizzo looked at his frustrated colleague. "Remember, Caro, I told you that this one didn't talk? And if she's scared of women to boot, this may be about as close as you're going to get to the interview you wanted…"

Caroline Sanchez wasn't happy. She didn't like any change to her way of doing things, and having a child be uncooperative after she'd put on her 'I'm on your side' façade was not a good way for her part of this visit to start. She'd seen far too many bratty kids whose guardians didn't give a damn what they did or how they behaved during her probationary period in case management to be put off at this late date by one little whippet of a girl acting shy. "And I told you that I wanted to have a chance to talk to this child away from her guardian. How am I supposed to find out for sure if the child's happy and safe here if I can't talk to her without having him influencing her even subtly." She turned her angry gaze on Jarod. "I demand to see this child's room and to speak to her alone."

Jarod bent to his little girl. "Well, Sprite, it looks like you're going to have to take her to your room and try to talk to her," he told her gently. "I'll be right here, though – and if you start to feel scared or if she does anything that you think might hurt, you yell real loud, and I'll be right there, understand?"

"Don't be ridiculous! She'll do nothing of the sort!" Caroline sighed in frustration. "Come along, young lady." She held her hand out to Ginger, obviously expecting the child to willing put her hand in hers and frowning threateningly when the little girl continued to cling to her guardian and shake her head vehemently.

Jarod turned anxious and half-angry eyes to Rizzo. "This is the kind of treatment that made her stop talking in the first place," he hissed at the CPS worker. "I just told you that she's terrified of female authority figures. What the hell is this woman trying to do, traumatize her even more?"

"Sanchez!" Rizzo spoke up finally, realizing Dr. Russell's concern was a legitimate one. "What the heck do you think you're doing? How do you think you'll be able to get her to talk to you when all you've done so far is scare her to death?"

Rizzo and Sanchez stared at each other for a while, and then finally Sanchez' gaze dropped. "I don't understand what the big deal is," she complained finally. "This kid is just being stubborn — I've seen it too many times to be fooled by this kind of act."

"Good heavens, woman!" Jarod could bite his tongue no longer. "Didn't you study her case file before you came here?"

"What the heck for," she snapped back at him, "it probably doesn't say anything different than the three cases I worked on before. And who the heck do you think you are…"

"I have been a court-appointed psychiatrist for some of your young clients," Jarod told her in a no-nonsense tone of voice. "Specifically, I was Ginger's psychiatrist until I took a leave of absence. And now that I'm bucking to become her father, I'll be damned if I let you bully her around in this way just because you CAN. She's not just a case, or a stubborn kid — if you'd read the file, you'd know that."

"Dr. Russell," Rizzo put a cautionary hand on Jarod's arm before the psychiatrist could rise to his full height. "Sanchez, I can't believe that you failed to study the case file last night, as is required before a visit of this kind. You forget, I think, that we're here for the CHILD'S benefit – not our own. You will wait for me in the car and we'll discuss this on the way back to the office." It wasn't a request.

Caroline Sanchez glared first at Dr. Russell, then at that brat of a child, and finally, most bitterly, at Rizzo. His seniority at his job gave him the experience to make or break the career of a probationary caseworker like herself. Having him accompany her to this interview and see how she coped with reluctant clients HAD seemed to be a way to win her way to the promotional ladder after having been dismissed from her previous social worker position in the Welfare Office. After three years in that office, she knew her way around most of the stunts people — especially kids — pulled. Now it looked like she'd made the mistake of showing her tough-as-nails business persona to a bleeding heart superior. She sighed, picked up her satchel and stormed toward the front door.

Rizzo turned to the psychiatrist and his terrified ward apologetically. "Sorry about that. I'd heard rumors, and my boss paired me up with her today to see if there was any truth behind them." When all he got back was an accusing glare from the tall doctor, he sighed and turned to the little girl. "I'm sorry she was so scary to you, Ginger. She forgets, I think, what it must be like to be little, like you."

Ginger blinked warily. It had been hard to understand what had gone on, but it seemed that That Man and He had told That Woman to go away. That must mean that That Man might not be quite the horrible person she'd thought he was.

"Will you show ME your room?" Rizzo asked gently. "Maybe you can go with Dr. Russell and I'll just follow you, and then we all can see it together?"

Wide, dark eyes studied the CPS case-worker's face for a long moment. Then, slipping her hand very obviously and tightly into her guardian's, Ginger nodded and began leading the way.

Deb stood in the kitchen doorway and stared into the den, watching how the machine that Kevin had retrieved from an out-of-the-way corner of the room slowly moved her grandfather's injured leg up and down. From the looks of it, there were certain points at which the movement became painful, for Grandpa's face would tighten on a regular basis, and then ease again as the leg began to move in the opposite direction. It hurt her to know that he'd gotten hurt trying to protect her, and that he still couldn't walk properly. But she couldn't let herself think about that…

"Is Daddy going to have to have a machine like that?" she asked finally, moving further into the den.

"That's something you'll have to ask your father's doctors the next time you get a chance," Sydney told her frankly. "I do know that he has a lot of physical therapy ahead of him so that he can walk again."

"I finished the dishes," she told him then, finding the spaces of time where nothing was being said to be very uncomfortable. As much as she wanted to be with her grandfather, she knew that fairly soon he was going to start asking her questions that she wasn't going to want to answer.

"Why don't you bring us both a nice, tall glass of ice water, then," Sydney smiled over at her. "We can talk in here for a while."

Deb limped back into the kitchen and slowly got the drinks that had been requested. She returned to the den to find that her grandfather had cleared most of the mess from the coffee table. He had also shifted on his daybed so that not only could he see into the room better but there was plenty of room for her to sit next to him if she needed to.

"Why don't you sit in that recliner again," Sydney suggested, taking his glass of water from her with a quick glance of gratitude. "That way you can see me, I can see you, and we both can be comfortable."

Deb curled up in the recliner, tucking her feet beneath her. "So, what do you want to talk about?" she asked with as much false bravado she could muster.

"Well, we could discuss a few things that were left for this morning from your nightmare last night," Sydney said, keeping a close eye on her reactions.

As expected, the time since she'd suffered her scare had given her the chance to build walls around her. "It was just a nightmare," she shrugged. "I have them all the time now."

"Are they always the same?" he asked gently.

"Pretty much," she admitted sullenly. She REALLY didn't want to have to think about those horrible dreams again – or the memory that sparked them.

"In what way are they different sometimes?"

She aimed a sharp look at him. He wasn't asking the kinds of questions that she'd feared he'd ask – questions that the therapist in California had insisted on asking over and over again — and that made her wary. "The location changes sometimes."

"You said last night's dream took place in your room here." He put it in the form of a statement, and she nodded. "Where else does it take place sometimes?"

Deb wiped back across her eyes. "Most often it takes place at that house – you know, the one out in the middle of nowhere where everything happened…"

"Anywhere else?"

"In my room at home," she answered in a very small voice. "I'm home alone and there's nobody there to help me."

"Anywhere else?"

"Not for that one, anyway…"

Sydney's eyebrows raised. "You have more than one nightmare?"

Deb nodded unhappily. "Sometimes I'm running and I know that I'm running toward… something very bad… but I can't stop running…"

"Do you recognize where you are while you're running?"

She shook her head. "All I know is that it's dark, and I'm so scared."

"Is that how you feel while you're having these dreams – scared?"

"That's what I said," she bit back shortly, reaching for her glass of water and hiding behind the act of sipping.

"You told me last night that, in your dream, you couldn't move to get away. Does that feeling come often too?"

"What do you think? I COULDN'T get away," she reminded him bitterly.

"What are you feeling now?" he asked her abruptly.

Deb blinked. "Sort of… angry… I think."

"At whom?" Sydney looked at her evenly, keeping his face completely neutral so that she would feel at ease enough to tell him the truth. "At me?""

"A little," she admitted, her voice small again as she looked down at her hands in her lap.

"And why is that?"

She looked up at her grandfather again, astonished. "Because…"

"Yes?"

She reached for her glass again. "Because…" she repeated without elaboration, hiding behind the glass.

"Because I'm making you remember?"

"Yes." She glared at him, only to be met with a look of gentle acceptance.

"But I'm only asking questions about your nightmares. Is that something to be angry about?"

Deb blinked again. He was right – he hadn't asked her about that horrible morning or anything that man had done to her. He'd only been asking very general questions about the nightmares themselves. "But I thought…"

"You thought I was asking you about being molested?"

Her blue eyes opened wide and filled with tears at the facts of what had happened to her being stated so frankly and succinctly. "Y…yes…"

"Because your nightmares have everything to do with your having been molested."

She only nodded now, unsure of her voice. There was that word again, out in the open where she couldn't avoid it: her badge of shame.

"Have you told anybody what happened?"

"The police…"

Sydney shook his head. "I know you reported to them a nutshell version and identified the men involved. I'm not talking about that. I'm asking if you've told anybody what REALLY happened – everything that was done to you from the moment you ran out the front door here until you woke up in the hospital — complete with how it made you feel at the time and how you feel about it now?"

She stared at him, horrified at the very idea, and then shook her head.

"Why?"

"Because then they'd know…" she started, then paused as her feelings tried to overwhelm her. "Because I let him…"

"Because you didn't fight back?" Sydney asked gently.

"I couldn't…" she retorted, her voice vibrating with guilt.

"Does it make a difference?" he pressed carefully.

She stared down at her hands. "It makes it my fault," she accused herself softly.

"No, it doesn't." She looked up into his face in surprise at the vehemence and certainty in his tone. "You said it yourself," he continued without much pause, "that you couldn't fight back. You probably were tied so that you couldn't run and had tape over your mouth so you couldn't scream…" The tears that had only been swimming moments before dropped one by one to her cheeks as she nodded slowly. "And he was bigger than you were." Sydney waited, and again Deb nodded, her eyes blue wells of agony. "Then how could it have been your fault? You did nothing wrong, ma petite – living and being caught up in such a horrible thing and actually surviving is not a crime. The only person who did anything wrong was the man who molested you."

Deb wrapped her arms around herself and folded herself into as small a package in the big recliner as she could. "But now, I'm…"

"You're what?"

"Dirty," she answered very softly. "I feel like I have paw-prints all over me."

"Have you looked in a mirror lately?"

She looked up at him, astonished yet again. "What? No, why?"

He had thought as much — that too was a classic reaction to sexual assault. "Listen to me. I want you to go do something, right now," Sydney said with gentle but insistent firmness. "I want you to go into the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror – REALLY look at yourself. And when you think you're finished looking at yourself, I want you to take all your clothes off and I want you to look again — this time at your entire body, from head to foot. I want you to look at yourself closely — especially at those places where he touched you."

"Grandpa…"

Sydney shook his head. "Uh-unh. This is very important. You say you feel like you have paw-prints all over yourself – you need to look into a mirror and see if you can SEE those paw-prints for real. Be honest with yourself, and don't just give yourself a quick glance because you're afraid of what you'll find. Really look – see the details of how you look. And when you're done, get dressed again and come back out here, and we'll talk some more about this."

Deb stared at him. "You're serious!" She'd never heard anything so outrageous…

"Absolutely! Go on, cheri," Sydney pointed at the bathroom door that opened back into the den. "Be sure to lock the door after you so that you feel secure, and then do as I tell you."

As she considered the request, her emotions shifted. "I'm afraid," she admitted in a harsh whisper.

Sydney modulated his voice to be as comforting as possible. "I know you are, ma petite. But I'm right out here, and I'll make sure that nobody bothers you while you do this. Just remember, the only person that will be in there with you will be YOU." He smiled at her gently. "Go on, and then get dressed and come back out and sit down again. We'll talk some more then."

Deb got slowly to her feet, shaking internally as she hadn't since first regaining consciousness, and limped slowly toward the bathroom door. She cast a long, frightened look back at her grandfather who was ensconced on the daybed with his leg strapped to a machine moving it up and down slowly. She listened carefully for Kevin but heard nothing from the young man who had moved to the living room to continue reading at some of the material from file folders Sydney had handed him much earlier. Then she reached through the bathroom door and turned on the light and, after one last glance, stepped through and pulled the door shut behind her.

Tyler found himself indulging in an old nervous habit of flipping a quarter across the back of his fingers one by one — first in one direction, and then in the other — while waiting for Colonel Fox to come on the line. It had been an interesting adventure, trying to navigate the Pentagon labyrinth of hierarchy to someone who could address the issue he wanted to present. The last person he'd spoken to, a Major Baker, had assured him that Colonel Fox was the man he needed to speak to.

Finally the dead air in his ear gave a click, and he heard, "Colonel Fox."

"My name is Tyler, sir, and I work at The Centre in Blue Cove, Delaware," Tyler introduced himself with no further ado. "I have a matter of importance to discuss with someone in authority."

"Well," Fox drawled in an accent very much like Tyler's own, "considering that you managed to get my secretary to allow you through, how about you explain your important matter to me, so I can see if I can be of any help to you."

"Are you aware of the number of military projects that the Centre was working on for the Pentagon — we thought — that were recently canceled, with all materials turned over and unexpended funding returned?"

Fox paused a moment. "I remember hearing about a rather interesting ruckus about a bunch of projects we here at the Pentagon had never heard of before being suddenly turned over to us half-done, and the rather large sums of money that were handed over at the time." There was a great deal of humor in the drawling voice. "That was you boys?"

"Yes, sir," Tyler confirmed. "Well, it seems that our behavior wasn't very popular with the colleagues of YOURS who had been the movers behind the projects originally. Our Chairman has been contacted repeatedly by different military officers in an attempt to put those projects back into development, and…"

"Now you just wait a minute, son." Fox sat up straighter in his chair. He'd seen the mission statements to some of those mystery projects, and they had been anything BUT fun and games. "You're telling me that there are military officers still trying to promote those projects?"

"Yes, sir," Tyler put his quarter back in his pocket and leaned forward to his desk too. "Not only that…"

"The United States is not interested in projects that violate international law…" Fox began in a huff.

"Sir, if I may?" Tyler asked patiently and without letting his frustration color his voice.

"What the hell was your organization thinking, letting such projects go forward in the first place?" Fox demanded.

"In the first place," Tyler let some of his own steel gird his voice, "the Centre just underwent a major reorganization. The people in charge of taking on such projects are no longer running the show here. THAT was why we sent the projects back along with all associated materials and funding — WE want nothing to do with them ourselves any longer."

Fox's eyes narrowed. "All right, son, you have my attention. You're saying you have military officers coming BACK to you, trying to restart some of these… obscenities?"

"Yes, sir, and willing to go around the Chairman and her staff and make their appeals directly to the scientists involved. In particular…"

"Deliberately ignoring the chain of command?" Fox interrupted.

Tyler was getting used to the Colonel's abrupt speech patterns. "Yes, sir. In fact, the reason I'm calling is that I was hoping that either you or one of your representatives would be willing to come to Blue Cove this evening, when this military officer is supposed to call our scientist back to get her answer."

Fox was quiet for a moment. "Your scientist, I take it, is cooperating with you?"

"Yes, sir. It was she herself who reported the contact."

"You have a tap on the line?"

"A word from you to the local police would make that a lot easier to accomplish," Tyler suggested evenly.

"What is the name of this so-called 'officer'?" Fox demanded.

"Stiller," the younger Texan reported flatly. "Colonel Daniel Stiller."

"That name's familiar," Fox mumbled almost under his breath. "When is this telephone call going to happen?"

"Seven-thirty. If you can be at the Centre by seven o'clock, you'll be able to listen in with myself, the Chairman, and our Security Chief."

Fox nodded. "At the Centre, you say?"

"IF you can pull some strings and get the Delaware Attorney General to authorize a phone tap in time — otherwise, you'll have to come with us to the residence…"

"I'll be on the phone to the Attorney General as soon as I finish with you, Mr. Tyler." Fox was writing notes furiously. "I want to thank you for putting up with me until you could lay your matter out."

"Not a problem, sir. I look forward to meeting you in person," Tyler was able to breathe a little easier and almost smile again. "Until this evening."

"Until this evening, sir," Fox said crisply. "I'll have the officers setting up the phone tap report to you."

"Thank you, sir." Now Tyler could relax entirely. The plan was coming together flawlessly. "I'll see you then."

Fox disconnected the call and immediately paged his secretary. "Cancel my afternoon appointments, Karen, and book me on a flight to Dover NOW. Then get me the number for the Delaware Attorney General. Seems we have a few troublemakers in the ranks that need their tail-feathers singed."

Feedback, please:


	6. Connections

Resolutions – 6

Connections

by MMB

Davy sat in his tree house, his legs dangling over the edge and swinging back and forth in an arrhythmic fashion in the late afternoon breeze. He was bored stiff. He didn't begrudge Deb her time with Grandpa Sydney that morning – even he could see that things weren't going so well with her since their kidnapping adventure to California. He had a sneaky feeling it had something to do with the way that man was touching her while they were tied up and in that horrible house, but she was unconscious when that had happened, so maybe it was something else. He blinked and rubbed his eyes to dispel the memory of one of the two faces that tended to haunt his dreams nowadays and make him feel frightened and lost.

He'd been glad to get home, to be with Grandpa and Kevin again. It was good to see that, while both had been hurt in the attack that had captured Deb, both were nicely on their way to healing. But it seemed that some things had changed since they'd left, and not necessarily for the better as far as HE was concerned.

Kevin was no longer a constant playmate, asking questions about all sorts of things while either over at the park or on his stomach on the floor of the den playing video games. No, Kevin was now spending a great deal of his time reading – and reading stuff that Grandpa very quietly but firmly told Davy that he really didn't want him to be reading too. The papers, he knew, were from one of the heavy boxes that had been stacked against a wall in the living room.

It was finally from Kevin, in order to convince Davy to leave him alone to read in peace, that he had discovered that the papers had to do with the many projects that had been done over the years where his Mommy worked. Kevin told him that when the Tower had been bombed, much of this information had been lost in electronic format when the Centre's mainframe computer had been destroyed. Kevin explained that Mommy wanted to know what was in the boxes so that the important stuff could be typed back in, while the other stuff could be thrown away.

That made sense, but it still didn't leave Davy with a lot of options when it came to ways to spend his day. Grandpa had spent the morning in the den with Deb talking about the stuff that was bothering her – which meant that he couldn't play his video games in there like he used to. Kevin was busy reading – although for an hour or so after lunch, while Grandpa had napped, Kevin had come out to the back yard to practice some really neat body movements that he said Mr. Ikeda was teaching him. Davy had been intrigued and struggled to copy his friend's movements to the best of his ability, and that had managed to make that first after-lunch hour fly by and leave him tired and sore in new and interesting ways.

But now Kevin had gone back to his reading again. Deb had jumped into her car to go to Dover to visit with her dad and Grandpa had awakened from his nap and was now reading through the pile of papers as well. Mommy had gone back to work that morning, and Sam was working too, leaving him with nobody to be with and nothing interesting to do. His regular softball playmates didn't meet on Thursdays, so going to the park would be an exercise in futility. Daddy was in California and so was Ginger…

Maybe that was it, Davy decided as he pulled his legs back into the tree house and went over to the pile of Superman comic books that some of his favorite reading material. He missed his little sister. He sat down on the floor of the elevated abode and closed his eyes to remember the face of the little girl who had been one of the biggest and nicest surprises of that whole adventure. He missed her, and missed the way she looked up to him and followed him around as if HE were the grown-up! He'd never imagined being a big brother could make him feel so good, so needed.

He leafed through a couple of the comic books, trying to allow the storyline to carry him away in his imagination the way it had so many other times in the past – to no avail. Superman was make-believe – but he had lived through his own adventure where it had been HE who had rescued everyone. It had felt good to see the respect and admiration of all those strangers – especially the police officers – while waiting for his Mom to come get him out of the hospital. Sam had been very open in telling him what a good job he'd done.

And now he was expected to go back to quietly living life as David Parker, eight year old elementary school kid with nothing special going for him? He knew better than that. The past week had taught him in no uncertain terms that he had much more going for him than just that.

He was just going to have to figure out a way to tap into that extraordinary person who had commanded the admiration and respect again without having to get himself into trouble again in the bargain.

"This is Sydney."

"Hi, Syd," Miss Parker said into her telephone. "How are things going over there today?"

Sydney let the papers he'd been reading fall into his lap. "About as I expected," he reported. "I spent most of the morning with Debbie – and I think we made some genuine progress."

"What's Davy up to?"

"He's been spending a lot of time in his tree house today," he told her. "I'm thinking that later this afternoon, I'll call him in and talk with him a bit. He has a lost look about him today that bothers me."

"Well, you'll have plenty of time when you do decide to talk to him," Miss Parker said, stretching back in her chair. "I'm going to be working late tonight – babysitting a phone tap, to be precise."

Greying eyebrows climbed high. "A LEGAL phone tap, I hope?"

"As legal as they get," she said with satisfaction. "A representative of the Pentagon pulled some strings and got the Blue Cove P.D. on line. When he heard what we were dealing with, Chief Harrison had a man out here so fast…"

"Is everything OK?" Sydney asked in concern. "I've been so out of the loop lately…"

"We're just hoping to tie a knot in the tail of a military problem child," she told him vaguely, "and we're doing it by going through proper channels, no less. Ever heard of a man by the name of Stiller?"

Sydney smiled. That was the name that Tyler had run past him not all that long ago. "Can't say that I have," he told her firmly, preserving the story he'd promised Tyler he'd tell. "What is this all about?"

"Projects that we put a stop to that don't want to stay dead."

"Just be careful, Parker. You're playing footsie with the US government."

"And they're playing footsie with the Centre, Sydney. If they think that we're just going to roll over and be intimidated by a fancy uniform and hash marks on sleeves, they are very much mistaken." Miss Parker sighed. "Anyway, I'll give you call when I'm just about on my way, so that Davy will be ready when I get there."

"How about I call Deb and have her pick up some late supper from some fast-food place," Sydney suggested. "You're not going to be in any mood to cook, I don't do too well on my feet right now, and Deb doesn't need to worry about that too after everything else she's faced today."

"As long as it's nutritious," Miss Parker sighed again. "Thanks, Syd."

"Take care, Parker."

She disconnected the call and then pushed away from her desk. She gathered some file folders and a couple of legal pads from her inbox and walked out her office door, pausing at her secretary's desk. "I'm off to that administrative meeting. If I'm not back by five, just leave me a note with tomorrow's schedule on it and take off." She smiled down at Mei Chiang. "I'd imagine you and Xing-Li have something to celebrate tonight."

"Yes, ma'am!" Mei Chiang smiled back at her boss. "Good luck with your meeting."

"Thanks." The Chinese woman watched with genuine appreciation and almost devotion as Miss Parker walk off down the hall toward the conference room into which people had been flocking for the last half-hour. She still was having a hard time wrapping her mind around the new terms of her employment – not service anymore.

A very small value had been set on the room and board she'd been receiving all along, while her over-all stipend had been doubled several times over. Even with the room and board value deducted, she was soon to be amazingly rich – and so was Xing-Li. What was more, the Centre lawyer had taken a look at the green card that Lyle's money had provided her and clucked in dissatisfaction. He had then taken down her particulars and then Xing-Li's to get more proper sets of documents so that their stay in the country would be totally legal for the first time.

But most amazing of all was the check that was now residing in her purse – a check of several thousand dollars back wages. There was enough there for her to purchase a small and economical car, if she wanted – or to put into a bank and watch grow in the American way. If Miss Parker had wanted to assure that she continued to work for the Centre, she had done everything absolutely right. There was no way Mei-Chiang would ever consider working anywhere else.

Xing-Li's check, while not as sizeable as Mei-Chiang's, had been substantial enough to cause the younger woman to ask her roommate in hushed Cantonese, "Are we dreaming, Older Sister?"

Yes, there would be plenty to celebrate tonight. And Mei-Chiang's face softened as she considered that she would be able to celebrate her good Karma with Sam. Life was looking up for her indeed, in many, many ways.

Ginger pushed the sheer curtains back for what seemed like the millionth time, and then smiled as she saw her Grandma Maggie's powder blue sedan pull back into The Family's driveway. Behind her, on the hardwood floor, she could hear the Other Boy playing noisily with his cars and trucks like always. She didn't like to play cars with him – he was constantly crashing his cars into hers and knocking her stuff all over. She missed The Boy — HE would have taken care of her…

She especially hadn't been in the mood to put up with the Other Boy's high-spirited play after the events of the morning. Once That Man had finally left, it had taken a long time to stop shaking from the memory of That Woman's loud voice and angry, demanding tone. She'd climbed up into His lap as He sat on her bed and He had held her close and cuddled her for as long as he could, but then had taken her and The Toy — her constant companion and defender — over to Grandma Maggie's before leaving for work. Grandma had listened as He had told the story of what had happened that morning, and when He had left, she had sat down in her Big Comfy Chair and had Ginger climb up into her lap for a big hug.

Grandma had held her close for a very long time, as if knowing how upset she was, and begun rocking her and singing a strange little song about toad's feet and barefoot geese over and over again until it had eventually calmed her. Ginger had lain in her grandmother's arms wishing she knew how to tell Grandma of all the things that had been done to her – or better, how to tell Him. She wanted so desperately to tell Him all of her secrets so He could understand her at last that the silence had become almost painful now. She had told The Toy everything, of course – the silence had never stopped The Toy from understanding her — but The Toy hadn't been able to help her overcome the silence that had been her defense ever since things had gotten so bad.

Then Grandma had needed to go shopping, and had brought her over to The Family's house for some playtime with the Other Boy. How she wished she could tell Grandma that the Other Boy was just too loud and rough — that when he'd ram his cars into her legs, it HURT! But Grandma said she'd only be gone for a bit, so Ginger had decided to just move herself up to the couch in front of the front window and watch the world go by while the Other Boy played away on the floor. It was a plan that had worked the last couple of times she'd been brought over here. After all, it was the Other Boy who had hurt The Toy — and Ginger had yet to forgive him for that.

"Grandma!" the Other Boy cried and ran towards the sound of her voice. Ginger turned toward the sound of the voice, but didn't budge an inch. She knew better than to try to compete for attention – getting punched in the stomach by the other children or harshly set back into 'Time Out' for her efforts had long ago erased her eagerness at the sound of a trusted voice. She had learned the hard way the value of waiting until the Big Person was ready to be approached.

After all, she didn't belong here — not really — the Angry Lady had told her that often enough so that she could always remember. She had no family — nobody wanted to keep her around for long. And while the family she was living with may have changed, her situation within The Family had not — she still didn't belong. She wanted to belong to HIS family very much — to Him and Her and The Boy and Grandma — but she knew she didn't, and thus knew her limits. So she turned to sit properly on the soft near the front window and cuddled her teddy bear in her arms and waited for Grandma to remember that she was there.

"Sprite?" she heard Grandma call out into The Family's house. NOW she could slip to her feet and trot toward the kitchen, where The Family Lady was starting to prepare supper. "There you are!" Grandma smiled at her as she rounded the corner of the kitchen door. Grandma put out her arms to gather her shy little granddaughter close again and then looked up at her daughter. "Any trouble?"

"With Sprite? Not at all," The Lady answered without looking up from what she was doing at the sink. "She was quiet as a mouse – like always. I hardly knew she was here."

"Look what I got for you while I was shopping," Grandma smiled and put her hand into her trousers pocket and pulled out a little plastic card on which were two beautiful butterfly barrettes. Ginger took the card and admired the way the butterfly wings moved and glittered in the afternoon sunlight. Then she handed the card back to Grandma. These were just too beautiful to play with…

"You put them in your hair," Grandma explained patiently. "Come on – I'll show you." She put out her hand and Ginger let herself be led into the bathroom and picked up to sit on the counter next to the sink. Grandma carefully removed the butterflies from the card one at a time and affixed them into the dark hair to hold back some of the grown-out bangs that seemed always to be in her face. Ginger's eyes found her grandmother's in the mirror and sparkled almost as brightly as did the butterfly wings. "Do you like them?" Grandma asked with a smile.

Ginger nodded vigorously, and again the butterfly wings moved and shimmered against her dark hair like fairy wings. She looked back up over her shoulder at her Grandma in wonder. Nobody had ever brought her anything THAT beautiful before.

Once more, the silence had become more painful than she could have ever imagined it being. The silence had been a necessary tool during the days when any attempt to explain or ask for help against the Big Man hurting her at night after she'd gone to bed had been met with the back of a hand of the Big Man's wife. Then, in the house she'd been in just before being Taken Away, any attempt to answer or even speak at all had been met with the Angry Lady shouting angry words at her and putting her in 'Time Out' – and once more, the silence had become very necessary. But now… Perhaps the time had come for the silence to go away.

Ginger's face worked, and finally she got the beginnings of a hum out.

Margaret had been watching her little granddaughter carefully the moment the little face had folded into effort, and she blinked at the sound of a voice coming from that throat. "Sprite?" she asked, amazed. "What is it?"

Ginger sighed and tried it again. Why was it so hard to say something when she could understand it when others said things to her? "Mmmmmmaaa," she finally managed in a flat voice that sounded as if it had been unused for a long time. "Ttttta-kooo."

"My God!" Margaret put her hand to her mouth in astonishment, and then pulled the little girl tightly into her arms as she sat there on the sink counter. "You're welcome, baby," she soothed very softly into the side of the girl's head. "What a gift you just gave me – to try to talk!"

Grandma DID understand how hard it was! Ginger pulled back a little and reached up to touch her grandmother's cheek gently in appreciation and pulled her fingers back in amazement when she found them wet. Dark eyes met Margaret's brilliant blue in deep concern, and the little head shook back and forth. She didn't mean to make Grandma sad…

"No, no, Sprite," Margaret soothed. "Those are happy tears. I'm OK." She gently pulled her granddaughter back into her arms. "Those are happy tears. I'm so proud of you! Just WAIT until your Daddy gets home and I tell him what you were able to do today! He's going to be so proud of you too…"

Ginger smiled then and nestled into her grandmother's embrace. Happy tears? She'd never heard of such things. But yes, maybe the time had come for the silence to start to go away. Maybe, just maybe, it was finally safe.

"Hi, Daddy."

"Deb!" Broots closed the lid on his laptop and shoved the rolling table aside so that he could hold out his arms to his little girl. Gladly Deb rushed to her father's side and let him pull her close. "God, I'm so glad to see you," he told her in a tight whisper. "I was so worried…"

"I'm OK," she reassured him quickly. "A cut on my foot and a nip gave me an infection but…"

"Deb," Broots smoothed her hair back as she lay against his chest, "I know what happened — at least, what Miss Parker told me before she left for California." His hazel eyes were vulnerable. "I'm sorry I wasn't there to defend you…"

"It's OK, Daddy," Deb leaned against her father. "I'm OK, really."

Broots held his daughter tightly. He had never felt so helpless and useless than lying here in a hospital bed while his daughter was going through all kinds of hell at the hands of kidnappers. "I'm just so glad to have you back," he exclaimed sincerely. He held her close for another long moment, just soaking up the reality that she really was home, and safe, and then let her straighten up. "So. Are you letting Sydney help you?"

"Yes," she told him, cringing inside that even her father knew what had happened to her. "I talked to him most of the morning."

"That's good…"

"But I'm going to have to see about changing that, because I'm going to see if I can go back to work at Oggie's…"

"Deb, it's too soon. You just got back from…"

"I know, Daddy," she patted his hand and tried not to see the depth of the concern and worry in his eyes. "But I can't just sit around the house all day — I'll go nuts. And I can't just bother Grandpa with my problems all day — HE'LL go nuts probably a lot sooner than I would."

"Have you talked this over with him?" Broots insisted.

Deb looked away guiltily. "Not yet. I was going to tell him tonight when I got home."

"I really wish…" Broots saw the stubborn look that had come over his daughter's face and knew that he would be making no further progress with her. Still… "You need time to decompress from everything that happened," he told her gently. "Nobody's going to think you're being lazy if you…"

"I can't just let this put my life on hold," she exclaimed, having to swallow hard against an up swell of anger that she knew was unreasonable. "I'm walking better every day — my foot's hardly bothering me anymore. Working for Oggie would at least give me something else to do than sit around the house and mope."

"What about school? I thought you and Kevin were going to take evening classes?"

Deb shook her head. "We missed the first whole week of class, Dad. It would be awfully hard to try to play catch-up now — especially for Kevin." She looked down at her hands. "And, to be honest, I don't want to go to school right now…"

"What is it, SweetPea?" Broots asked gently, framing his daughter's face with a hand. "You can tell me…"

"I'm not doing a very good job of concentrating right now," Deb admitted finally with a small blush. "I don't want to do a poor job and have to repeat the class later."

"Have you told that to Sydney?"

She shook her head silently. Her long session with her grandfather had dealt with something far more painful. It had taken the better part of lunch and then the drive to Dover to get herself calmed down again. "Not yet."

"It sounds like there's a lot of stuff you need to talk over with Sydney," he commented dryly. He knew her — she was being defensive and closed in a way that he'd never seen before, and for the first time since he'd breathed his sigh of relief at her being rescued alive, he felt fear for her well-being.

"I will," she hedged. As much as she wanted to push away and run screaming from her father's room, all she could think about right now was Jarod's question the day before: "What about your Dad? Are you going to cut him off and push him away too?" She'd thought the idea ridiculous at the time — now, she wasn't so sure. But the one thing she DID know is that she didn't want to hurt him any more than he'd already suffered. "I promise, Daddy."

"I love you, SweetPea," Broots said softly and reached to pull his daughter close to him once more, frowning as he felt just that slight twinge of hesitation and resistance. "Everything will be all right now."

Maybe.

The intercom on Tyler's desk buzzed. "A Colonel Fox to see you, sir," Xing-Li's musical tones announced.

"Send him right in," Tyler responded immediately and then pushed back his chair from his desk. He was just rising as the door opened and a very slender middle-aged man in a smartly pressed dress uniform marched in. "Colonel Fox. I'm Cody Tyler."

"It's a pleasure to meet you face to face, son," the military man responded with an extended hand. "So, am I in time for the festivities?"

"We have everything set up in one of our security offices," Tyler explained, gesturing for the Air Force officer retrace his steps out the office door. "You go ahead and take off for the night," he told Xing-Li as he walked by, "and thanks for staying late."

"Yes, sir," the young Chinese woman nodded at him with the proper degree of respect.

"You civvies always get the pretty secretaries," Fox commented once they had moved far enough down the corridor that he wouldn't be overheard. "We tend to get the warhorses who are wonders of efficiency but not as easy on the eyes… if you know what I mean…"

Tyler smiled in response. "Yes, sir," he replied. Xing-Li was not quite as efficient as Mei-Chiang had been, but he had put that down to simple inexperience in running an upper-level office. In many ways, she was just as good — and that gave him hope for the rest. She was shier, more retiring, though — and Tyler had decided that one of the things he'd be working on with her would be self-confidence. "Here we are," he said and ushered the military man into the main security office, where banks of monitors had been set up to keep track of unused areas of the below-ground facility. Miss Parker was already standing by the desk with the police officer manning the listening device. "This is Miss Parker, the Chairman of the Centre. Miss Parker, may I present Colonel Fox, our Air Force liaison to the Pentagon."

"So you're the little lady who's set some of our independent officers in such a tizzy," Fox said with a smile and an outstretched hand. "Bravo."

As tired as she was from her meeting with scientific staff, Miss Parker's face cracked into a smile at the sound of another drawl almost as broad as that of her assistant. "It's good to meet you, Colonel. I take it you're from Texas too?"

Fox glanced over at Tyler. "Why, yes, ma'am. Y'all are surrounded today, it seems."

Miss Parker chuckled at that one. "So it seems," she said with a smile. "So… What have you found out about this Colonel Stiller?"

"Actually, not as much as I'd hoped," the Air Force officer admitted. "We have his intake records, reports regarding his training in pharmaceuticals and covert operations during the Vietnam War and Desert Storm. Technically, he's on staff in Bethesda, which is where his military paychecks are sent — but an inquiry sent to the Chief of Operations at the hospital shows no employment records there." Fox ran a thoughtful finger up one side of his nose. "You seem to have stumbled over quite an interesting mystery for us."

Miss Parker nodded as he rattled off the facts he did know. "He trained in pharmaceuticals — which explains why he was made contact person for Project Veracity."

Fox shook his head. "That is one nasty little piece of research, Miss Parker. Why one earth would your organization take on such a thing in the first place — even if it was commissioned by the US military, you would have thought…"

"The previous administration of the Centre had a habit of working on projects that pushed the envelope as far as ethics were concerned," Miss Parker explained in a deliberately dismissing tone. "That's part of the reason the men in charge are now referred to as the 'previous' administration — if you get my drift."

Fox nodded. "Perfectly, Miss Parker. Rest assured that I have informed my superiors of the events of today and this evening — and they have assured me that a full investigation into how such projects were commissioned and who is responsible will be undertaken immediately."

"That's good to hear," Tyler commented dryly. "I've had to meet with several of those people over the last few days, and Miss Parker met with her share not long before that…"

"Actually, I met with a Senator and an Army officer," Miss Parker informed them.

Fox's brows raised in surprise. "A Senator?" He frowned in consternation. "I wasn't aware that legislators were involved in the commission of military projects…"

At that moment, the telephone rang. All conversation in the room immediately ceased, and the police officer pushed the record button on his equipment as the others grabbed for headphones.

"Hello?" Dr. Mitchell answered her telephone nonchalantly.

"Dr. Mitchell, this is Colonel Stiller. How are you this evening?"

"Fine thanks."

"I'm hoping you gave my offer some serious consideration…"

"I thought it over very carefully, I assure you," Mitchell said crisply. "And I've decided I'm not interested."

There was a pause. "Are you certain you don't want to reconsider your decision?"

"You know, I have to wonder just what is going on when a high-ranking military officer like yourself feels he has to appeal to me — a research scientist — to continue a project that my employer has suspended."

"That was an unfortunate decision on your Chairman's part," Stiller admitted, "one that she will eventually come to regret."

"Is that a threat against my employer, Colonel?"

"No. I'm just pointing out that the people I'm working for do not take 'no' for an answer. We're determined to protect our country with the latest innovations in technology."

"That may be an admirable goal, Colonel, but it still makes me wonder why you are making an end run around my employers and offering me money under the table to essentially do a perpetual double-shift. Why don't you simply farm your obscene little project out to somebody else…"

"Because YOU were the one who worked on it originally, Doctor." Stiller's voice was growing tight, angry. "YOU are the one who knows the most about what stage of development the drug was in — what testing remained to be done."

"I turned all my records over to Centre Security when the project was closed down," Mitchell said flatly. "I was told they then forwarded all that material on the to Pentagon. Even if I wanted to begin work on Veracity again, I have no notes, no data, no preliminary…"

"What if I told you I could get you access to all your old files?"

Fox looked up at Miss Parker and Tyler in consternation. The way the recorded conversation was proceeding, it seemed that there was a fairly large and well-imbedded conspiracy at work. The data from the projects the Centre had returned had been put under lock and key at the Pentagon itself — even Colonel Fox didn't have the authority to request that data without permission from above. For Stiller to make such an offer there had to be an accomplice placed high in the chain of command.

"I'm still not interested, Colonel. I told you when you called earlier, I was glad to see Veracity shut down the first time — I'll be damned if I'll be a part of starting it up again."

"You will regret your decision, Doctor," Stiller's voice had grown dangerously quiet.

"Good night, Colonel. Please don't call again."

The call was disconnected when Dr. Mitchell evidently put the receiver down. The police officer stopped recording and looked up at the people surrounding his desk. "I take it you'll be wanting copies of this tape?"

"Two copies," Miss Parker interjected quickly. "One for Colonel Fox here, and one for Centre records. Providing you have no objections?" she asked, turning to the Air Force officer.

"None, ma'am." The colonel looked shocked and dismayed. "Not only did you people trip over a mystery, but it seems you've tripped over the tip on helluva conspiracy within the military machine itself. God only knows how long this has been going on, or how much money and information have been exchanged…" He paused, still dumbfounded by the audacity of the man on the phone. "…or how far up the chain of command it goes."

"I'm having experts go through our hard-copy archives," Miss Parker told him grimly. "I've no doubt that they will run across even more projects which were completed that were commissioned by this same group of individuals. I'm assuming you will want to be kept informed when we do run across them?"

"Absolutely!" Fox confirmed vehemently. "I will be reporting to my superiors the moment I get back to Washington — but I want you to feel free to give me a call at any time on this matter."

"Thank you for your time and inconvenience, Colonel," Miss Parker said, shaking the man's hand yet again. "It is good to know that we're now working with people with the best interests of the country at heart for real."

"Thank YOU, Miss Parker. Mr. Tyler." Fox shook Tyler's hand and then marched from the Security office.

"Looks like this is just a little bit bigger than we thought," Tyler commented to his boss.

"I'd say things might get a bit bumpy for us again," she replied in a similar tone.

"Shit. You'd think we'd catch a break sooner or later," he turned around scratching his head.

"With the Karma the Centre has been building for years, I'd wager good money that our break won't come until much, much later," Miss Parker responded wryly. She looked up at him. "Ah well, I promised you a challenge…"

Tyler turned and stared at her for a moment before shaking his head and chuckling. "I think this falls into the 'be careful what you wish for — you might just get it' category."

"Either that or the Chinese curse, 'May you live in interesting times.'"

"Wonderful," he said walking toward the office door. "Just wonderful!"

Davy slid the arcadia screen door aside quietly and stepped into the den, trying to be careful not to disturb his grandfather's reading. It was growing late, and the light in the tree house had gotten to the point where it was hard to read. He'd heard Deb's car pull into the drive a while ago, and he imagined that his cousin was probably puttering with putting dinner together. Maybe she could use some help…

"Davy?" came the accented voice of his grandfather from the daybed.

"Yeah?"

"Come on over here for bit," Sydney said, shifting on the cushions until there was room for Davy to sit next to him. "We haven't really had much of a chance to talk today."

"You've been busy," Davy shrugged his understanding.

"You're important too," Sydney reached out a hand to the boy, who eventually let himself be pulled closer and seated on the daybed. "I heard about everything you did — how you kept your wits about you and thought your way to rescue."

Davy's lips twitched. Even Grandpa Sydney couldn't help praising him! "I did OK, but…"

"But…"

Davy watched the CPM machine move his grandfather's knee slowly. "But Deb got cut and got really sick from that, and we almost didn't make it."

"Deb cutting her foot wasn't your fault," Sydney began.

"Yes, it was!" Davy insisted. "I couldn't get mine up high enough to break the glass — it had to be her."

"But if you hadn't broken the glass, you'd have never gotten away," Sydney reminded the boy. "It was a reasonable risk. And she survived…"

"I did what I had to do," Davy mumbled, picking at some lint on his pantleg.

Sydney smiled at the boy. "I know that," he said gently. "But you've been walking around here today as if you lost your only friend." Davy's head ducked down lower, and he knew the boy knew exactly what he was talking about. "Tell me about that."

Davy opened his mouth, then thought better of it and closed it again while he thought about his response. Finally: "Everything's changed now."

"What's changed?" Sydney asked patiently.

"Everything," Davy reiterated. "You're stuck on that… thing…"

"I was stuck before then," Sydney reminded him with a smile. "I've been under the weather for a while now. That isn't anything new."

"But the machine is," Davy insisted, "and you're on crutches now." His voice grew stronger as he began to list off the things that he felt had changed. "And Kevin is always busy reading now, and you're in here all the time reading or talking to Deb."

"Do you feel forgotten?" Sydney asked pointedly.

Davy shot his grandfather a sharp look, and then dropped his gaze again. "A little."

"What else?"

"It's hard, you know?"

"What is?"

Davy shrugged and wiped his hands on his pants. The tree house was dirtier than he remembered it — he'd have to go out with a broom and take care of that when he got back in the morning. "In California, I was like the hero — I'd managed to get Deb and me out of that house and somewhere where we could be found. And now, here, I have to go back to being…"

"The same kid you were before all this happened?" Sydney finished for him.

"Yeah," Davy acknowledged in a sour tone. "It sucks."

"Because you don't feel like the same kid you were before all this happened?"

"I'm not." Davy's tone was convinced. "Back then, I was a little kid who did everything he was told and played our special 'what if' mind games every once in a while. Now I played a 'what if' game in my own head to figure out what to do — and the grown-ups are all telling me what a good job I did." The storm-grey eyes, so much like his mother's, were serious. "Deb was hurt, and I had to make the decisions."

"What would you like to see?" Sydney asked, genuinely curious.

Davy shrugged again. "I don't know — but I can't just be a stupid kid anymore. I'm not a stupid kid."

"No, you're not." Sydney settled back into his cushions and gave his grandson a piercing look. "But you still are only eight and a half — not quite nine — years old. You've learned how to turn a 'what if' into a plan for action — but you have a long ways to go to be a grown-up."

"Remember how it was before we started those 'what ifs', Grandpa?"

"I remember." Sydney could hardly forget. Davy had come over to visit his grandfather one weekend day and almost exploded from all the repressed anger and resentment that had been building up at school that he didn't dare air with his mother. Small for his age at the time, he was being bullied by one of the bigger boys in his class and laughed at by the others for not standing up for himself. What was more, the material was being presented at too slow a speed for a very intelligent child — he was on the verge of failing due to sheer boredom. That first 'what if' game had been a safety valve that had released pent-up anger and thought through various scenarios to address the entire school situation.

"I feel like that's what I'm starting again."

Sydney sighed.

"You know," Sydney decided that he needed to tell his grandson about the probability that his mother was going to be asking questions soon, "your Mom knows about the 'what if' games. She wants to talk to me about them one of these days. Are you going to be OK with that?"

"Do I have a choice?" Davy asked, not entirely happy about it, but aware of why it had come. "Deb told her about them. I suppose she's curious."

"You could say that," Sydney agreed. "I just wanted you to know…"

"Thanks for the warning."

"But back to our discussion. You don't necessarily need me to think through the 'what ifs' to what's going on with you right now, Davy. You've already proven you can do quite well at that on your own. You just have to realize that part of your frustration is going to be your age being an obstacle for a very long time — until you ARE a grown-up in your own right. Any 'what if' about this will have to consider your age as an inflexible and permanent detail that will have to be worked around in each alternative."

"But Grandpa," Davy complained bitterly, "for a while there I felt like Superman, you know? I may not have been able to leap tall buildings, but I rescued the girl."

Sydney couldn't help smiling at the allegory Davy was making of his favorite super hero — and he marveled at how precise the allegory had been drawn. "And you want to feel like Superman more often?"

The small, dark head nodded vigorously.

"Then you'll have to find other damsels in need of rescue, and use your 'what if' power to think your way to a solution for them. And between times, you'll have to remain in disguise as…"

"David Parker, elementary school geek," Davy grumbled unhappily.

"Do you ever read about Clark Kent being unhappy about being a fumbling reporter?" Sydney asked the boy point-blank. "Think about it — he can't even get Lois to give him the time of day as Clark Kent — while she's falling all over herself drooling over him as Superman!"

"I suppose," Davy sighed heavily.

"Even he knows that it isn't all fun and games being a super-hero, Davy," Sydney told him compassionately. "A lot of the time being a super-hero is about swallowing a lot of garbage and smiling, playing at being the regular guy without a clue." He gave him a pat on the shoulder to draw up his attention so that the boy was looking at him. "Not everybody has what it takes: to be able to stay in the background until he's needed and then be able to just slip back into the background once the rescue is finished. That's why there are so few real super-heroes. And all the failed super-heroes had the same flaw: they liked the notoriety. Are you going to make that same mistake?"

Davy's grey eyes stared deeply into his grandfather's. So being plain old Davy Parker was the harder part of being the extraordinary person? "I can do anything I put my mind to," he said proudly.

"Then I guess you'll have to learn how to be plain David Parker again, won't you?"

Davy nodded. "I suppose."

Sydney ruffled his grandson's hair. "So, plain-David-Parker, how do you feel about going out to the kitchen and helping Deb get that pizza and salad ready for us to eat when your mother gets home?"

The smile that Davy bestowed on the old psychiatrist was the closest he'd seen to the old, mischievous Davy-smile since the boy's return from California. Sydney breathed a small sigh of relief as the boy trotted obediently toward the kitchen. At least that was a small crisis. He'd have to watch, though — some of the statements Davy had made signaled the potential for a deeper problem that would be much more difficult to manage.

"This is Parker."

"Hey, Miss Parker…" Broots greeted his friend.

"Hey there yourself!" Miss Parker paused walking from the office annex to her car, her sweater tossed over one arm since it was still almost too hot to breathe. "How did you do?"

"I ran all the project names you gave me," he told her, "and several popped up. I sent Deb home tonight with a list of the files that include those project names in the text."

"Thanks, Broots. How are you, anyway? What does your doctor say?"

"I have at least three more weeks in this plaster of Paris prison," he grumbled, "and then at least three to four weeks of therapy before I'm in any shape to even think about coming home to Blue Cove."

"Anything I can get for you in the meanwhile?"

Broots' eyes began to twinkle. "A nice, tall, cold beer sounds REALLY good at the moment," he told her in a voice that sounded as if he was dying.

Miss Parker smiled softly. "I suppose I could bring one of those extra-large purses the next time I come into Dover," she mused to herself.

"Miss Parker, please!" Broots exclaimed. "You don't want to mess with an invalid man's mind like that if you don't mean it!"

"Your nurses would kill me."

"They'd kill me too, but what a way to go!" he chuckled.

"You're in a pretty good mood for being flat on your back."

He smiled softly. "I had a nice visit with Deb this afternoon," he told her. "I'm feeling a whole lot better about some things, and more than a little concerned about a whole lot of others."

"Yeah," Miss Parker could sympathize with him. "She's got a long road ahead of her, my friend."

"As long as she keeps talking to Sydney she stands a chance at getting through it though," Broots said seriously. "The problem is that she told me a number of things that evidently she hasn't mentioned to Syd yet."

"Oh?" She wasn't really all that surprised. "Like?"

"Like going back to work for Oggie soon…"

"It's too soon!" she barked with a frown.

"Tell that to her," he retorted. "She says she would rather go to work than sit around the house going stir-crazy."

"Well, you have to give her that one," Miss Parker conceded, seeing the logic to Deb's reasoning. "What else?"

"She's having trouble concentrating. That came up when I asked why she didn't go back to school."

Now she frowned again. "That I didn't know. You want me to mention it to Syd when I see him tonight?"

"No," Broots said after thinking about it for a while. "But I'll keep bugging Deb about whether she's talked to him or not – and if it goes too long…"

"I'll keep my mouth shut for the time being," she promised, "until you tell me I need to put my nose in."

"How are things at the Centre? Things started settling down to a dull uproar yet?"

She shook her head. "Not in the least. Looks like our suspending all those questionable projects I had you checking on today has turned up an interesting case of the left hand of the US military not being up to speed on what the right hand has been doing."

"Ho boy, that doesn't sound good…"

"Nothing's getting dire yet. But we are going to have to put additional security on at least one of our pharmaceutical researchers, now that she's stood up to one of those military mavericks and told him to shove his project."

"You be careful, Miss Parker," he warned her seriously. "If people within the Centre itself can cause the kind of trouble we're just now coming out of, how much worse can it be running up against the US government?"

"C'mon, Broots, don't get your panties in a bunch yet," she said in a tone that clearly communicated how little humor she was finding in the situation. "We've started to gather allies within the military hierarchy ourselves, and we're keeping records of every meeting, every phone call we get from these yahoos."

Broots shook his head. "Still, Miss Parker, it doesn't pay to underestimate these folks."

"It's good to know that my faithful Scooby Doo still knows how to recommend a strategic retreat," she teased him gently. "I tell you, I've missed having you and Sydney at my side, Broots. Tyler's good, but you guys have been my backup for too long. So get your ass out of that hospital bed as soon as you can — and that's an order!"

"Yes, Miss Parker," he teased back.

"You take it easy, my friend," she said then in a far less teasing and more fond tone. "I have an errand to do in Dover in the next couple of days — I'll stop in to see you and bring you your beer then."

"Oh, Miss P, you're a life-saver!"

"Just don't drool too much between now and then — you'll give the game away."

Broots chuckled. "I'll try. Say hello to Sydney for me too, will ya?"

"Will do."

Sam frowned as he took in the slightly run-down appearance of the apartment complex. He hadn't even known that this building existed on Centre property. It was protected from the sight of the main facility by a curtain of tall cypress trees. And only one apartment looked like it was occupied: the one Mei-Chiang had indicated was the one she lived in. He looked around, deciding to have a talk with Miss Parker about some general maintenance if she was going to be renting to employees, and then climbed the short flight of stairs and knocked on the door.

Almost immediately, the door was opened, and Mei-Chiang's roommate, an even tinier Chinese girl, was bowing him into her home. "She's almost ready, sir," she said in her musical accent — so much like Mei-Chiang's — and gestured toward a futon couch. "Please have a seat. May I bring you some tea?"

"No, thank you," Sam said kindly. He blinked and looked at the young woman again. "Aren't you Cody Tyler's new secretary?"

The pretty face broke into a shy smile. "I'm honored that he is testing out my abilities, yes," she said softly.

"If you're half as good as Mei-Chiang, I'm sure Tyler will be more than satisfied with you," Sam told her with a smile. "I heard him bragging today about having had the luck to find the one other GOOD secretary at the Centre."

Xing-Li smiled widely at the second-hand praise, her smile politely hidden behind a cupped hand to her face. "I shall try to fulfill his expectations, sir."

"I'm sure you wi…" Sam's reassurance broke off the moment he caught sight of Mei-Chiang. She had set aside her meager Western wardrobe and pulled out her simplest and most elegant cheongsam of the finest cobalt blue silk brocade. "Oh, my!" he breathed, barely able to believe that this lovely creature had agreed to go out to dinner with him.

Mei-Chiang smoothed her hands down the front of her cheongsam nervously. "I hope this is appropriate," she said in a soft and hesitant voice. "I have never been to Dover…"

"That is definitely more than appropriate," Sam nodded, starting to feel that HE was the one underdressed. "I'm parked just outside…"

"I don't know when I'll be back," Mei-Chiang told her roommate in rapid-fire Cantonese. "Don't wait up for me. Just don't use the security chain when you lock up."

"Enjoy your time, Older Sister," Xing-Li replied in the same language. "Are you sure you're not afraid of this big American?"

Mei-Chiang looked into Sam's blue eyes and shook her head. "I think I'll be safer with him than I would be with almost anybody else," she said, then let her tall and imposing date capture a hand and nestle it into his arm.

"Ready?"

"Yes!" Most definitely, on this day above all, she was ready for something new and exciting — including getting to know this gentle giant better.

Discussion around the dining table had been thin — Deb had grown quiet and introspective since her return from visiting her father, Miss Parker seemed tired from her first day back at work, and Kevin was still very uncomfortable with Deb's reticence. A break had come when Mr. Ikeda had knocked and been allowed into the house, a break that Kevin immediately took advantage of. He cornered his sensei and convinced the man to come out to the backyard with him to work once more on the complicated kata exercise he was learning.

Davy, still intrigued and interested in seeing just exactly what his friend was learning about, followed the two out into the back. Ikeda bowed to the young son of his new employer and began running over details that he'd explained to Kevin days before. The young man could always use a refresher, and it appeared after not very long a time that he had gained another student. And when told that what he would be learning was called Ninjitsu — or the Art of the Ninja — Davy's enthusiastic response had been "Cool!" and an immediate tight concentration on the beginning moves of the kata as taught by a real teacher.

Miss Parker and Sydney sat at the kitchen table after the meal, watching the goings on in the back yard while Deb made quick work of cleaning up after the meal and then retired to her room. Sydney nursed his mug of root beer carefully, taking occasional glances at his foster daughter. He knew very well what she was working up the nerve to talk about, and he decided the time had come to just have the discussion over and done with.

"About three years ago," he began in simple narration, "Davy came over to visit me one weekend. He needed to talk to somebody, and he was afraid to talk to you."

"Afraid of me?" That took Miss Parker aback. "For God's sake, why?"

"Because things at school were spinning out of control for him. He was being pushed around by a schoolyard bully…"

"I wouldn't have been angry about that…" she interrupted defensively.

"And he was bored, Parker. He learned far faster than the other kids in his class, and he'd gotten a progress report from his teacher that he was afraid to show you. He was failing — failing because he already knew what he was being taught and no longer had the patience to pay attention in class." Sydney's face grew soft with recollection. "He was so afraid of disappointing you because he knew that YOU knew he could do better."

"And you didn't tell me?" Her voice grew slightly accusing.

"He made me promise to tell you nothing," Sydney said simply. "But what disturbed me more than anything else was the burden of anger that he was starting to carry around with him. He was furious with the harassment he was being put through — the humiliation of being laughed at by kids who didn't understand the concept of walking away from fights…"

"I taught him to never start a fight," she remembered with a hard swallow, "that to be drawn into a fight was a sign of failure."

"Admirable goals in an ideal situation, Parker, but very difficult for a small boy under tremendous stress. The fact is that he was a little nuclear bomb ticking away, ready to explode when he hit his final straw. That's the day we started the mind games. I sat him down and had him help me think through all of the possible alternatives that he could use to address his situation, and then think through the responses of the others. We spent the entire day in 'what if' scenarios — about the bullying, about the humiliation, and about the schoolwork."

"There's nothing wrong with that," Miss Parker said, some of her dismay addressed by the truth of the matter. "I just wish you had told me SOMEthing after a while…"

"A promise is a promise, Parker. I don't make any of mine lightly." The chestnut eyes sought her grey ones. "Whether to a child, or to an adult on the verge of pretending to commit suicide, my word is my bond. Knowing this discussion was coming, I had to warn Davy today."

She flinched. "Point taken," she allowed begrudgingly. "But from the sounds of things, that wasn't the end of it."

Sydney sighed. "It wasn't. School soon became a part of the mind games, because keeping his grades up within the school learning structure was important to maintaining the idea that he was just a normal kid. But he was back talking to me a couple of weeks later about how he was still having trouble keeping himself LOOKING like he was paying attention. That day, we played a new set of games, using the information he was supposed to be learning in school and taking the level of understanding up a notch or two — whatever he could handle. We went through his reading, and I gave him the challenge to not only understand the readings, but to go to the school library and bring me additional information on the same subject. In mathematics, I brought out word problems that addressed the concepts he was learning at a much more advanced level. Our 'what ifs' that day were about alternatives on how to keep ahead of his studies just enough that he could start dreaming up his own word problems, or write essays telling me all about the extra information he was finding."

"You kept him from letting his studies get boring," Miss Parker nodded. Again she understood exactly what he'd done and why. "I still don't see…"

"This went on for about a year and a half," Sydney continued as if telling her a bedtime story. "But one day, he brought me a problem that had played itself out in front of him involved two other children at school — and the consequences had bothered him greatly. So I led him through a simplified exercise where he identified all the pertinent emotional and psychological factors in the situation, developed a set of alternative scenarios to resolve the situation, and then thought through each of those scenarios one at a time. Once we had discovered what would have been the best alternative, we went back over the reality of the situation and discussed where the mistakes had been made that had led to one child breaking an arm and another being suspended from school."

Miss Parker was staring at him. One part of her could understand precisely what he was doing and why — her son WAS intelligent, after all and had asked for the help. But the other side of her, the side the Centre had trained, could see the pattern developing. "You made him SIM out the situation."

Sydney nodded. "When we were done, he felt much better about the whole thing because he understood the mechanics of the situation from the inside out. About two weeks later, he brought me a scenario he'd seen in a TV program — and we worked through it using the same basic techniques." His chestnut eyes watched her closely. "As time went by, the scenarios he'd bring to me grew more complex, and the technique we used to work them through became more complex as well. By this time he was reading far ahead of his grade level, and absorbing just about everything he read like a sponge."

"Please don't tell me you tested him as a Pretender, Syd," Miss Parker pleaded with her foster father.

"I never formally tested him, no. I would never do that — not to my own grandson!" Sydney shook his head vehemently. "All it would take would be one word of such results in the wrong ears, and Lyle or Raines would have gladly put us all in our graves to bring Davy back into captivity in the Centre."

"But still, you trained him…" She glared at him.

The psychiatrist shook his head. "By then, Davy was enjoying the challenges — he came to me often, asking for more. I tried to tell him that you wouldn't appreciate it, but I could see that he was far more intelligent than any of us had wanted to consider and that his intelligence was just starting to assert itself. And I didn't need to teach him to Pretend, Parker. He was already Pretending every day he went to his elementary school and brought you home glowing report cards. Academically, he's been doing high school level work for nearly six months now. But emotionally, he's still very much an eight year old. By Pretending to be a regular kid with the obstacle of academic boredom removed, he's been progressing emotionally at a very healthy rate toward being a well-adjusted and happy individual."

"And that's how he knew what to do to get them free and rescued." Miss Parker leaned her chin into her hand. "He'd been working problem situations for months, maybe years."

"He'd been taught to think them through, yes. But this was the first time he was in a position where he'd had to act on his 'what if' himself since those first few." Sydney could see she was working at trying to understand him. "Parker, when I found out whose child Davy really was, I stopped being surprised at his abilities. He's the son of a documented genius and a mother whose intelligence also pushes envelopes. He comes by his skill naturally."

She put up her second hand and rested her face between her hands, looking at her foster father. "You have to realize that one side of me is just furious with you for training my son — your grandson — to be a Pretender. You took a big chance, Sydney, with his life."

"Parker…"

"Let me finish," she said, moving one hand to put up a single restraining finger. "But the other side of me is so damned grateful that you helped smooth Davy's life — made it so that he COULD become part of the crowd and not stand out and draw Raines' or Lyle's attention to him. And, I know, the training you gave him eventually saved his life and Deb's." She put her face back between her two hands. "I just don't know how I should feel right now."

Sydney reached out and put a hand on one elbow as it rested on the table. "Listen to me. I love Davy more than I love life itself. I love YOU more than I ever thought I could love anyone. I did what I did because I thought it was the best for Davy and you at the time. I never had anything BUT Davy's best interests at heart. You HAVE to know this."

"I do know it," she said softly. "That's why I'm finding it so hard to just blow up at you — you were using all the skills you had to help my son when he needed the help. I guess…" she paused, "I'm incredibly disappointed that neither of you felt you could trust me."

Sydney's chestnut gaze was sad. "I'd have told you a long time ago — but I seriously doubt you would have been able to see both sides of it like you do now. And I had given my word to Davy."

Miss Parker's eyes flitted to the backyard and the trio standing on the grass and moving slowly and steadily through the dance-like exercise, and then came back to rest on Sydney's face. "There aren't any MORE secrets that I might trip over unexpectedly some day, are there?"

Sydney shook his head. "I swear to you there's nothing else." He watched her process the information. "The big question is whether or not you'll let Davy continue if he wants to." Her eyes came up to meet his. "He's been the impetus behind the training for quite a while now — he thrives on the extra information. He may not be very happy if you decide to pull the plug on this…"

She sighed. "Just promise me you won't seek him out," she said finally with a piercing look. "If he comes to you, that's fine. But don't train him if he doesn't ask for it."

Sydney sighed and nodded. "I can live with that, and I think Davy can too. I promise I'll wait to be asked."

"Then thank you for giving my son the skills that save his life," she said finally. "And thank you for your promise not to push."

"I didn't mean to hurt you, Parker — I hope you know that…"

She patted his hand on her elbow. "I do know it, Sydney. It doesn't help much right now, but I do know it."

Feedback, please:


	7. A New Day

Resolutions – 7

A New Day

by MMB

"Good morning, Mei-Chiang," Miss Parker sing-songed as she walked toward her secretary's desk and gave the Chinese woman an assessing look. "I hope you were able to celebrate your new circumstances properly last night…"

"Oh yes, ma'am," Mei-Chiang nodded and smiled up at her boss. "Sam had invited me to dinner, and…"

"Sam?" Miss Parker stared. "As in my Security Chief Sam Atlee?"

Mei-Chiang started and immediately paled. "Is that improper, Miss Parker? I didn't know…"

"No, no," Miss Parker reassured her secretary quickly when she realized how her surprise had been interpreted. "I guess I'm just a little surprised. Sam has been such a private individual for so long. It's good to see him getting out and socializing a little bit." She smiled again. "Did you have a good time?"

Mei-Chiang relaxed slightly, still not quite sure whether she'd broken some unwritten rule about fraternization with fellow employees. "Oh yes! He took me into Dover, to a very nice restaurant, and then we found a very pretty beach to walk on the way home…"

Miss Parker smiled wider. "I would have never thought of it," she mused aloud.

"Is such a thing allowed, Miss Parker? I didn't know that there was a rule that two people who worked for the Centre…"

Miss Parker shook her head and waved her hand. "No, no. There's no rule against you two seeing each other. Actually," she bent down toward the Chinese woman conspiratorially, "I'm glad to see that somebody has finally caught his eye." She straightened. "Sam is a good man, and he's been a trusted friend of mine for almost longer than I want to remember. What I want is to see him happy – and you too," she added quickly.

Mei-Chiang looked down with a deep blush of embarrassment. "I too would like to see him happy, ma'am," she said softly.

"Then I don't see where there's any problem at all," Miss Parker said knowingly.

"Then I have permission…"

"Mei-Chiang," Miss Parker interrupted, "you not only have permission but my whole-hearted support. Now, I need you to get a hold of Sam for me, and then make sure the conference room is set up for the meeting with the architects and interior decorators. I have a new Tower to whip into shape ahead of time."

"Yes, ma'am." Mei-Chiang's head had come up with the obvious approval of her spending time with Sam, and she reached for the phone as her boss walked past her into her office.

"Sam Atlee," Sam answered his telephone almost immediately.

"Mr. Atlee, Miss Parker would like to speak to you, please. Let me transfer you…"

"Wait," Sam said quickly, before he could be put on hold. "I just wanted to tell you again how much I enjoyed last night."

"I too," she smiled softly, remembering her evening with him with fondness.

Sam had been a gracious and conscientious host, escorting her to a beautiful and expensive restaurant with delicious food and a very refined atmosphere. In her best brocade, she had not been out of place at all among the other patrons – indeed, she had caught one American gentleman giving Sam a look of undisguised jealousy that had made her consider holding just a tiny bit tighter to his arm. When she told him of her good fortune earlier in the day, he had flagged down the waiter and ordered a glass of celebratory champagne for the both of them that had teased both her nose and her taste buds.

They had eaten slowly and talked constantly about whatever topic presented itself. He asked her about her home, and showed the same consternation Tyler had when she told him how she'd come to the country originally and for what purpose – and smiled in relief when she'd explained how the lawyer was going to make sure she was legal at last. She'd turned the tables and asked him about his home and family, and found out that he had been an only child – and that his parents were now dead. He told her the story of how he'd been recruited to work for the Centre as an alternative to jail – and how working for Miss Parker had turned his life around entirely.

After dinner, there had been a very mellow band playing in the lounge, and they had stopped when Sam asked her to dance with him. She had never felt so small as she had when her oversized date had so very carefully taken her into his arms and begun to sway to the time of the music with her. His huge paw had totally engulfed her hand and then pressed it back against his chest as she struggled not to step on his toes. The one time she had, he'd pressed a finger against her lips before she'd had a chance to start apologizing. "You'll learn," he'd told her in a warm voice. "It just takes practice."

They had started back toward Blue Cove and the Centre but turned off the main road and found a secluded beach that Sam knew about. The night was a balmy one, with a gentle sea breeze that took a while to chill. They had found a driftwood log and sat watching the moonlight on the dark water and continued to talk until she had finally shivered. Sam had shrugged out of his sports jacket and draped it around her shoulders, and then taken advantage of the moment to pull her closer to him. She had leaned against him, grateful for the warmth of the jacket, the protective shield of his arm around her and the respectful way he was treating her.

He hadn't pushed his advances beyond just holding her close beneath his arm. Eventually they both were chilled and had walked back to the car with her still firmly and warmly tucked against his side and under his arm. He had delivered her to her apartment door and smiled his goodbye. And now apparently he was telling her that he'd enjoyed their time together as much as she had.

"I want to see you again," he told her, his voice that same, warm tone from the beach the night before.

"I too would like that," she answered with a soft blush.

"Do you like spaghetti?"

"I've never had it," she admitted.

"Then how would you like it if I made you dinner tomorrow afternoon?"

She had hoped to spend Saturday morning looking for a car, so she could finally begin to explore her new home a little bit. "Actually, I was hoping I could ask a favor of you…"

"Anything."

She blushed again. "I would like to buy a car…"

"All right. How about I pick you up at about eleven o'clock tomorrow morning, and we can go into Dover and see what we can find for you. I'll make sure that whatever you do get will be trustworthy and worth what you spend on it." He paused. "Not many folks feel safe in trying to trick me into buying trash." She could hear the smile he was wearing and feel the warmth of his protecting her yet again flow over her.

She smiled back. How wonderful it was to have an American friend to turn to after all this time. "I appreciate that, Sam. And then I'd like very much to taste your spaghetti."

"It's a date. But you better let me talk to the boss-lady now," he said, his good humor apparent in his tone. "We don't want to do too much personal business on the company clock."

"Transferring…" she said and put him on hold. "Miss Parker, Sam's on line three for you."

"Thanks," her boss said.

Mei-Chiang sat back in her chair and gave a deep sigh. She was going to be seeing Sam again. Amazing how the mere thought of the better part of a day spent together could make her heart beat so much faster. She pushed away from her desk resolutely and headed down the corridor toward the conference room. There was a coffee urn to make sure was prepared and ready to serve and a delivery of donuts to make sure had arrived on time.

She would have to file her daydreams about a certain tall and blue-eyed Security Chief for later. She had work to do.

Colonel Stiller walked out of the bathroom in his skivvies and tee shirt to answer the telephone. He used the towel around his neck to wipe away moisture on his hands before he reached for the receiver. "Stiller here."

"Well?" General Curtis' tone was brisk with expectation.

Stiller grimaced, glad there was nobody in the hotel room with him to catch him making such a face at a superior officer. "She turned me down flat," he reported with no preamble.

"That's unacceptable," Curtis growled. "We need Veracity most of all – we NEED that drug, Doug, and we need it yesterday!"

"You don't have to remind me," Stiller growled back.

"You WILL watch your tone with me, Colonel," Curtis barked angrily. "I AM your superior officer!"

"Then what would you have me do, SIR," Stiller snarled into the telephone. "Dr. Mitchell was the chemist in charge – and Veracity really was almost a one-person project. Can't we just retrieve the documents and farm the project out to our R & D contacts at Dow?"

"No, we can't." Curtis sounded final. "Doing that would jeopardize other legitimate projects and call attention to us. We need to get a wedge into the Centre – I want you to find that wedge. One scientist who'll play ball with us is all we need – I don't give a damn if it's a biologist, a chemist, or even a damned lab assistant. The Centre has been the key player in our plans for years – we need them to stay in that position."

"Then tell me how to get that wedge," Stiller insisted in frustration, "because I'm running out of ideas fast!"

"Have you tried blackmail yet?"

"Easier said than done. Just who do you want me to dig up dirt on?"

"Shit, Danny, use your imagination! Start at the top of the heap and work your way down until you hit pay-dirt. Start with Miss Parker. We find the proper leverage to use on her directly, and all our problems are solved. If not her, then her assistant – or her top corporate officers. Somewhere there has to be at least one skeleton somebody doesn't want exposed."

"That's going to take time," Stiller reminded his superior. "I can't be investigating a whole bevy of personnel AND be trying to dig up the head of the team that worked Project Black Hole too. I need help!"

"You're on your own – you know as well as I that we simply don't have the resources to have more than one person working any one angle of our design at any one time. I've turned Black Hole back over to Craig Lewis again – he was the Navy liaison for us with that one. You focus on Veracity. Hell, dig up dirt on this Mitchell bitch, if you think you can. Scare the shit out of her and then let her know that she's in for more of the same if she doesn't cooperated. I really don't give a damn – just get that project back online!"

Curtis hung up before Stiller could formulate an answer. Frustrated, he wadded up the towel from around his neck and threw it as hard as he could at the unmade bed. That damned Pentagon pencil pusher had no idea what he was asking!

Sydney looked up from his reading at the sound of Deb's sandals on the kitchen floor. "Cherie, are you going to come in here this morning so we can continue?"

Deb grimaced as she finished her drink of water and re-shouldered her purse before walking to the den door to answer her grandfather. "I was thinking," she began lamely, "that I would go over to Oggie's and see about whether I can go back to work. Maybe this afternoon…"

Sydney straightened and peered over the back of the couch that served as his daybed in consternation, a concern that only heightened when he saw her literally prepared to walk out the door. "Deb, I don't think that's such a good idea. Can you please come in here so we can discuss it?"

"Grandpa, I can't just sit around the house all day…"

"Sit down," Sydney ordered in a no-nonsense tone and pointed at the recliner. He held her gaze steadily with his own until she finally realized that he WASN'T going to back down, and then she finally slumped, let her purse strap slip from her shoulder as she went over to the chair and perched her behind on the very edge. "You aren't ready," he told her firmly. "You still haven't even been able to look Kevin in the face and hold a decent conversation with him. What are you going to do with all those young men you used to chuckle about when they'd try to pick you up?"

She blanched but insisted, "I'll manage. I'm behind a counter where they can't get at me very well…"

"That you would think of their actions in terms of their 'getting at you' should be a warning flag, ma petite. How do you think Oggie will respond if you have an extreme reaction to one of your customers and fall to pieces there in the store?"

"I won't do that…"

He folded his brows together in a serious frown. "How can you be so sure? How can you know that when a man walks into the store that reminds you of the man who molested you…"

She shuddered. That was one prospect she hadn't thought of. "Grandpa…"

"Give it a week before you talk to Oggie, cherie – give me a week to help you over the worst of this." Sydney could only hope that she'd see reason. "Then, if you're genuinely doing better, I'll support your going back to work one hundred percent." He could see that she was wavering. "Give me until next Friday, Deb. Please."

"I'll be putting my life on hold!" she exclaimed in frustration at the logic of the suggestion.

"Don't be absurd," Sydney growled at her, starting to lose patience with the attitude. "Your life hasn't been put on hold. You just have some issues to work through from your recent adventure. Trust me, that's plenty of life to live."

"I'm not sick…"

"Not physically anymore, no." He gazed at her evenly and unflinchingly. "But your emotions are a mess. The moment anybody recommends you take the time to put yourself together again…"

"Why is everybody trying to tell me what I can and can't do?" Deb reached the end of her own patience and bolted to her feet. "I'm twenty-one years old."

"And at the moment acting like a spoiled four-year-old," Sydney said in a soft and disapproving tone. "The moment you start acting like a responsible adult again, you'll begin to be treated like one."

Furious blue glared into implacable chestnut for a long and silent moment. "I'm going in to Oggie's to see when I can start work again," she announced stubbornly. "I'll be back in about an hour." When she saw that she was not going to get approval for her plans, she slipped the strap of her purse once more up on her shoulder and stalked angrily from the room, her limp apparent because she was too mad to try to mask it. A few moments later the front door slammed shut, followed close by the sound of the little Nova's engine being revved and then pulling away from the house.

Kevin peeked his head around the corner. "Where's Deb going?" he asked, curious.

"Oggie's," Sydney responded in frustration and consternation. This was most definitely not the kind of behavior Debbie Broots had demonstrated for all the years that he'd known her. He had hoped the session they'd had together the day before would have created a bond that would establish him as a trusted advisor. But evidently her emotions weren't balanced enough for such a bond to be reliable yet — that would take concentrated effort over time.

All he could do was hope and pray that Oggie had filled her position during her absence. She really didn't need to be working so soon. She was about as unstable as any patient he'd treated had ever thought of being; and being outside full custodial care in her condition, she was liable to make unwise or even irrational decisions before anybody could step in and protect her. And that meant that she could easily get herself in over her head before she realized she was even in trouble.

"Colonel!" a call echoed down the hall of the Pentagon. "Colonel Fox!"

Colonel Fox's brisk gait faltered and he turned around to see who was calling him. From one of the offices he had just breezed by an Air Force Captain bustled out to meet him. "What is it, son?" he asked with a brisk salute.

The Captain returned the salute immediately. "Major Meyers wanted me to tell you that we recorded a very interesting call to Colonel Stiller's hotel phone this morning. He asks that you stop by his office to review the transcript at your earliest convenience."

Fox was more than willing to set aside the task he had been about to embark on in favor of heading immediately to Major Meyers' office. "After you, Captain," he ordered with a gesture. The Captain turned around and headed back into the office he had just left, Colonel Fox close on his heels. The corporal standing at the file cabinet tucking away paperwork snapped to attention as the two office breezed through the outer office and through the inner office door.

"Peterson said you had something for me?" Fox threw a hasty salute at the rapidly rising Major behind the desk.

The face of the African-American office broke into a wide smile. "Yes, sir! He received a call at o-seven-thirty hours this morning that was traced back here to DC — to an office here."

"HERE?" Fox stared. "Who the hell was it?"

"General Gerald Curtis."

Fox sank into the chair in front of Meyers' desk. "Curtis! Isn't he…"

"Attaché to one of the Joint Chiefs, yes sir." Meyers drew out a cassette player. "But listen to this!" He rewound the tape in it for a bit and then pushed the play button.

General Curtis' voice boomed out of the little speaker in mid-statement. "…wedge into the Centre – I want you to find that wedge. One scientist who'll play ball with us is all we need – I don't give a damn if it's a biologist, a chemist, or even a damned lab assistant. The Centre has been the key player in our plans for years – we need them to stay in that position."

"Then tell me how to get that wedge," Stiller's voice replied, "because I'm running out of ideas fast!"

"Have you tried blackmail yet?"

"Easier said than done. Just who do you want me to dig up dirt on?"

"Shit, Danny, use your imagination! Start at the top of the heap and work your way down until you hit pay-dirt. Start with Miss Parker. We find the proper leverage to use on her directly, and all our problems are solved. If not her, then her assistant – or her top corporate officers. Somewhere there has to be at least one skeleton somebody doesn't want exposed."

"That's going to take time. I can't be investigating a whole bevy of personnel AND be trying to dig up the head of the team that worked Project Black Hole too. I need help!"

"You're on your own – you know as well as I that we simply don't have the resources to have more than one person working any one angle of our design at any one time. I've turned Black Hole back over to Craig Lewis again – he was the Navy liaison for us with that one. You focus on Veracity. Hell, dig up dirt on this Mitchell bitch, if you think you can. Scare the shit out of her and then let her know that she's in for more of the same if she doesn't cooperated. I really don't give a damn -- just get that project back online!"

Meyers turned the tape player off. "That was the gist of the call. Apparently Curtis was unhappy when that Centre scientist told Stiller to take a flying leap at a rolling donut."

Fox leaned forward toward the desk. "That may be, but we now have two other pieces of information. We have another project name to investigate — Project Black Hole — and we need to find out just who the hell Craig Lewis is. We know he's Navy, what we DON'T know is his connection to Curtis and Stiller and how it came about."

"What about the Centre, sir? Should we notify them of this?"

Fox thought for a moment. "They played ball with us," he said finally, "there's no reason not to play ball with them. Besides, they're the ones who know which scientist in their employ will need watching next." He rose. "I'll call them later and bring them up to speed. In the meanwhile, I want a tap on every phone line Curtis accesses regularly — here, at his home, at his favorite bar, whatever. And," he stabbed a finger in the direction of Meyer's desk, "I want the archived documentation for the Centre projects moved — especially the files on Veracity and this Black Hole. Then I want 'round the clock surveillance on the rest of the lot. Someone here has the authority and the agenda to think they can purloin that information right out from under our noses — I want that person caught red-handed when they make their move."

"Sir, I don't have the clearance to get into the locked-down archive where the Centre documentation is," Meyers reminded his superior officer carefully.

"I'll get it for you," Fox assured him, "and then I'll help you move the stuff. Only the two of us will know where we hide it from now on, is that clear?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Then get to work and get those phone taps in place by this afternoon at the latest."

"Yes, sir!"

Fox gave Meyers another salute and then strode out of the office, leaving Meyers staring at his little cassette player.

Deb climbed into her little car and slumped behind the wheel, more disappointed than she'd been in a long time. Oggie had had to hire a high school girl to man the counter in the mornings to replace her during the time she'd spent in California. The girl had quickly traded hours with the afternoon counter girl so that she could keep her job and work afternoons after school started up again next week and so that the afternoon girl could have her afternoons free again. So at the moment, he didn't have any position open for her, but he'd assured her that the moment he had an opening…

Damn those men interfering with her life, she thought bitterly as she pounded her steering wheel in sheer frustration. Damn Davy for getting her out of that mess and not leaving her to die! Damn Oggie for not holding her job open for her return! Damn Grandpa for saying she wasn't ready to go back to work yet! And damn Kevin for…

A tear rolled down her cheeks. Poor Kevin hadn't done anything — he had carefully steered completely clear of her ever since he'd given her that welcoming hug. She'd seen him look at her a couple of times the day before when he thought she wasn't watching — and the look on his face had been that of a puppy that had been beaten for something it didn't understand. Last night at the supper table, he had sprung up to answer the door and let the Japanese bodyguard into the house and then found every excuse he could think of to keep himself at a distance from her. This morning he hadn't said a single word to her and headed off to the living room and his reading assignment for the Centre. No, Kevin had done nothing to deserve her listing him in her diatribe at all.

And yet she hadn't found the strength to apologize to him, and she knew she owed him a big one. And now she was faced with the situation Jarod had warned her against. She had pushed away someone whose only crime was caring — and right now, she was hurting too badly to want to face the task of trying to mend fences.

She stuck the key in the ignition and turned it resolutely. Maybe it was just as well that he stopped relying on her to teach him about the world. Her world had turned dark and ugly, like her — Kevin deserved someone who could show him a world filled with good things and people. She couldn't do that anymore.

Deb looked back over her shoulder and then nosed the Nova away from the curb when the traffic ebbed. She didn't have the slightest idea where she was going now. Grandpa had been pretty put out with her when she'd left — and she was surprised that she'd actually had the guts to stand up to and directly defy the man who had been one of her all-time favorite people for almost as long as she could remember. She'd been pushing him away too, she realized with a sick feeling in her stomach — and he'd been justified in telling her she was behaving like a spoiled brat.

Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to curl up in his arms and have him tell her that things would get better again — but she doubted that open arms would be the reception waiting for her on Washington Street when she got back. No, she deserved and probably would be on the receiving end of a fairly stern chewing out made no less painful by the love and concern behind it. And as much as she knew that in the end she would be able to curl up in her grandfather's embrace the way she wanted and needed, she just didn't have it in her at the moment to face the chewing out that would inevitably and rightly come first.

Without even thinking about it, she turned down her own street and within minutes found herself pulling into the driveway of the home she shared with her father — or had before a bomb had brought the whole Centre Tower down on him. It had been quite a while since she'd stepped a foot inside her own home.

In a daze, she pulled her keys from the ignition and climbed out of the Nova, walked up the sidewalk and unlocked her front door. The house smelled closed up and abandoned, much the same way it had smelled when she and Dad had come home from their vacation in France all those years ago. She brushed against a bookcase near the front door and frowned at the smudge in the even layer of dust her action had caused.

She dropped her purse on the sofa and moved like a quiet ghost through her own home, tweaking curtains aside to peer out into a back yard where the flowers were obviously suffering from lack of water. She unlocked the arcadia door and went into the back yard, pulled the hose from the spindle it was wrapped around and set the sprinkler so that the spray would hit at least half of the thirsty plants. She turned on the water and adjusted the volume until she was watering everything she intended to for the time being and then headed back into the house. Even closed up and stuffy, the house was cooler inside than it was outside.

She sat down on the couch and then, after a bit, tipped over so that her head was on the cushioned arm of the couch. The day was completely in the toilet, she decided, and closed her eyes. Maybe if I can just rest a bit, I'll feel better. She took a deep breath and tried to go to sleep, but sleep stayed irritatingly just out of reach. Her mind was too busy replaying all the disappointments of the day — the argument with Grandpa, Oggie's bad news… After lying there for several minutes, she gave up and sat up, fully intending to shift the sprinkler to the other side of the yard.

The memory hit her almost before she could catch her breath and came at her completely out of the blue — the smell of old dust and long-unopened rooms, the overwhelming heat pouring in through the glass of the windows. Suddenly, she wasn't in Blue Cove, Delaware anymore but in an abandoned ranch house on the edge of the Mojave Desert. She staggered as she rose to her feet, almost tripping over the reality that her ankles and wrists WEREN'T held together with duct tape they way they had been in that house. Wild-eyed and desperate, she stumbled to a seat at her grandmother's piano and stared about her in terror that the men would come back — that HE would be back and start touching her again.

She couldn't let him catch her again! She jumped to her feet and without even thinking about it made a mad dash for the staircase and the sanctuary of her bedroom upstairs. Deb darted forward to grab up the handset of the telephone next to her bed and took it with her as she opened her closet door, slipped inside and pulled the door closed after herself. With shaking fingers, she dialed the first number she could think of.

Sydney barely even moved his eyes from the complicated diagram as he reached for the handset on the coffee table next to his cup of coffee. He pushed the button and put the device to his ear, still engrossed in the elegance of the design on the paper he was holding. "This is Sydney."

Deb had never been so glad to hear that voice in her life. "Grandpa?" she asked in a very tiny and very frightened voice.

Sydney could barely hear her, but he let the paper drop to his lap immediately. "Deb? What's the matter, cherie?"

"Grandpa…" She was almost sobbing now. The hard floor was under her backside, and the smell of heat and unopened house was nearly suffocating. The past was just far too real. "Please…"

"Where are you?" Sydney demanded immediately. "Talk to me, cherie…"

"I'm scared…" She huddled, cupping the phone to her face as if afraid of being overheard.

"KEVIN!" Sydney bellowed, covering the mouthpiece to prevent Deb's ears from being damaged. "Get me off this thing NOW!" He returned to the phone. "Come on, ma petite. I'll come for you. Just tell me where you are!"

Kevin scurried into the room, startled by the volume and desperation behind his mentor's call for freedom from his therapy machine, and immediately began working at the straps after stopping the machine's movement of the trapped leg.

"I… I didn't know where to go…" she stammered. "I thought… So I came home…"

"So you're at home." Sydney nodded and moved to put both feet on the floor the moment he was free from the CPM machine. "I'll be right there, cherie, don't worry." He hissed in pain as he dragged himself upright with a crutch and the injured leg was forced to bear weight again. "You stay put right where you are. I'm coming for you."

"Hurry," the terrified little voice urged.

"Here, you keep her talking," Sydney ordered, thrusting the handset into Kevin's hands. "Calm her down as best you can. I'm taking the car…"

"Are you sure…"

"Yes, I'm sure! Just do it, Kevin. She's scared and she needs your voice to hang onto until I can get there." Sydney was already moving toward the kitchen and the garage door, his car keys already pulled from his pocket. "Keep her talking."

Kevin put the handset to his ear. "Deb?" he asked carefully.

"Wh…where's Grandpa?" He cringed. He'd never heard Deb sound so small and unsure of herself before.

"He's getting into the car to come to you," he told her truthfully. "You don't live so very far away from him, do you?" He heard the muffled sound of the town car's engine revving and then getting softer as the vehicle left the garage enclosure.

"Kevin?"

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry…"

The apology was made so plaintively that it brought a lump in Kevin's throat. "It's OK, Deb," he told her gently. "Sydney will be there in just a little bit, and he'll bring you home, and it will be all right."

"I didn't mean…" He could tell she was crying. Deb put her forehead against her knees. She couldn't honestly tell if the men who had chased her were just outside the closet door or not yet. " I didn't mean it…"

"I know you didn't," Kevin soothed, her upset making his stomach knot painfully. "I didn't mean to scare you either."

There was a pause, and he could hear her breathing hard as if she'd run a distance. Then: "Where's Grandpa?" she asked suddenly, her voice small and even more frightened.

"He's on his way, Deb. Honest. Give him a little time to get there."

"I'm so scared…"

"I know you are, but it will be OK — I promise. You don't live far, do you?"

"No…"

"Then he should be there in just a few minutes…"

Sydney made the trek between his house and the Broots' family residence in record time. He pulled his comfortable sedan onto the driveway slab next to Deb's little Nova and then climbed carefully from behind the wheel, grabbing his crutches from behind the seat as he gained his feet. He carefully limped up the walk and tried the door, finding it unlocked. He pushed through into the house and listened for a moment.

"Debbie!" he called out and listened again. Not a sound answered him. He moved very carefully through the house and noticed how the sprinkler had been set in the back yard. "Debbie!" he called again, "Where are you, cherie?"

Kevin could hear behind the fast breathing of his friend the muffled sounds of his mentor's voice. "Deb!" he called to her. "Sydney's there — he's calling to you!"

"No, no," she shook her head. "That's HIM, coming back for me…"

"No it isn't, Deb," he soothed. "Listen to the voice. It's Sydney…"

"Deb!" Sydney was starting to grow worried. "Deborah Ann, answer me!"

That's when he heard it — the tiniest sound as if someone were scrabbling against the floorboard above his head. He eyed the stairs with trepidation, then sighed. There was no way around it. He took the steps one at a time and yet as quickly as he could. "Deb?" he called out again.

He paused in the hallway, listening again and then moving when he caught the sound of a soft voice. He pushed through a bedroom door — into Deb's room — and looked around. The first thing his eye rested on was the telephone base unit on the nightstand — without its handset. Then he saw that the closet door was ajar. He moved to in front of the closet door and slowly pulled it open. There was a very frightened squeak, and then Deb was scrabbling to put herself even further back into the far corner of the closet.

Sydney pushed at the rack of clothing until he had cleared the area above Deb's head so that he could see her and she could see him. "Deb!" he called sharply. "You're safe now, cherie. It's me!"

Slowly her transparently pale face turned up to look at him. "G…Grandpa?"

"Give me the phone, cherie." He put down his hand, and Deb slowly obeyed his directions. "I've got her, Kevin," he told the upset young man on the other end.

"Can I do anything else?"

"No, I can handle it from here," he assured him. "Deep breath, Kevin, crisis is over."

He disconnected the call and tossed the handset on the bed behind him just in time for Deb to unfold herself from the tight little wad she'd been on the floor and reach up to him. "Grandpa…" she called in a shaky voice.

Propping his crutches so that he could lean on them without holding on, he held out his hands to his granddaughter to help her rise and, once she was on her feet, then pull her to him. She immediately wrapped her arms around his body, and as he wrapped his around her he could feel the violence of her shivering. "Hush now, cherie," he soothed at her, smoothing his left hand on her shoulder in slow and comforting circles. "I have you now. You're safe."

That was all it took. Deb's fragile hold on coherence shattered, and she burst into grinding sobs that made her trembling even more acute. Sydney could only hold on and whisper soft and comforting words at her from time to time.

Miss Parker opened the door to Sydney's house and was struck immediately by the silence. "Davy?" she called into the house, putting her purse on the small table by the doorway.

"He's still over at the park playing softball," Kevin answered her from the living room.

"How are things here?" she asked, moving into the living room so she could see the young man when spoke to him. Then she caught sight of his distressed face. "What is it? Did something happen?"

"Well…" Kevin wasn't quite sure how to explain.

"Sydney!" She whirled to go check on her foster father.

"He's upstairs with Deb," Kevin's voice caught up to her before she'd reached the kitchen.

Miss Parker turned and slowly came back to the living room and stared at the young Pretender. "Upstairs?" After his knee surgery, Sydney had had strict instructions to avoid stairs whenever possible — it was the reason he'd taken up residence in the den. "What happened?"

"I'm not exactly sure of all the details," Kevin admitted, "but she left the house earlier today to go to Oggie's after arguing with Sydney. A couple of hours later, Sydney got a call from Deb — she was scared and panicking. She'd gone home and freaked out, I guess. He had to go rescue her, and had me stay on the phone with her until he got there. They didn't come home for quite a while — and when they did, she was still crying. He had her head straight upstairs and he followed her after getting his medical bag out of the closet. He's been up there ever since."

"Thanks." Miss Parker turned and headed up the stairs immediately. She walked to the end of the hall and knocked very softly on the door to Sydney's room, which Deb had been using as her own while Sydney convalesced on the daybed in the den. She pushed through the door.

Sydney was sitting on the edge of the bed, one of Deb's hands held in one of his while he stroked her forehead gently with the fingertips of his other hand. His face was tired, worn, and his expression one of deep worry. Deb's eyes were closed and her breathing deep and regular — she was asleep. Miss Parker walked over to stand next to him and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. He looked up into her face with a tired sigh and then bent slightly over the young woman in the bed. "I'm going to be just out in the hallway for a little bit," he explained to the sleeping girl and then reached behind him for his crutches.

Miss Parker helped him to his feet and then led the way out of the bedroom. "What happened, for God's sake? What are you doing up here, of all places?"

"She had a flashback to the house where she and Davy were taken, and it got mixed up with a nightmare she's been having, and she panicked. I found her hiding in her bedroom closet." He shot a glance at the closed door. "I've sedated her for now. I'll probably sit up here with her through the night, in case her nightmares are any worse for what she's been through…"

"Is she going to be OK?" Miss Parker asked, "or should I call Broots…"

"I honestly can't say at the moment if she'll ever recover fully, Parker, and calling Broots at this point won't accomplish anything but give that poor man something else to worry over. But what I CAN tell you now is that she was more than just fondled by the man who molested her." Sydney's chestnut snapped with restrained anger. "She finally told me what happened — everything. She may not have been raped by any formal definition of the word, but she might as well have been from what WAS done to her."

Now it was Miss Parker's turn to glance at the closed door. "She hadn't said anything about that before…"

"I don't think she'd been able to remember everything until today," Sydney explained after a couple of cleansing breaths to calm himself. "This is a common occurrence in sexual assault cases — the mind will avoid memories it isn't prepared to handle. Once she started talking today, though, it just poured out of her. And the more she remembered, the more upset she became."

"Kevin said you two argued this morning…"

He snorted and nodded wryly. "Over whether she was ready to go back to work at Oggie's yet."

Miss Parker nodded. "Broots told me she was thinking about that when I talked to him on the phone last night — I was hoping you'd talk her out of it…"

"I didn't." Sydney's voice was stark. "She wouldn't be convinced with reason — and she got on her high horse and walked out when I told her she was behaving like a spoiled child. Then, when she got to the store, Oggie told her that he'd had to hire someone else. So she was working with a serious disappointment on top of a good mad when she ended up at her own house — and then evidently had a flashback to that house out in the desert when it was so hot and had been closed up for a while. That part is classic Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome."

Miss Parker put her hand back on Sydney's shoulder. "You're looking all in, Syd. Anything I can do for you?"

He shook his head. "Kevin brought me up a sandwich a while ago, and I'm not exactly feeling much like eating at the moment. I'm glad you're home early, I haven't been able to spend any time with Davy at all today." He blinked. "You ARE home early. Everything OK at the Centre?"

"Don't worry about me — things actually ran fairly smoothly today, and I'm hoping for a nice, quiet weekend for a change. I think you have enough on your plate right here right now. I'll take Davy off your hands for the evening, then, and let you get back to Deb." Miss Parker leaned forward and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "You be sure to get your rest too — and don't over-stress that knee of yours. I thought you weren't supposed to do stairs."

Sydney looked at her in exasperation. "Right now, my knee is the least of my concerns — at most, it's a nuisance. But I'm not anxious to injure myself again, I promise you. The easy chair in my room has an ottoman, and I intend to use it."

"I'll call you later tomorrow morning, then — and I'll swing around later in the morning to do some cooking for us all."

"Thanks, Parker." Sydney reached out and hugged his foster daughter all of a sudden. She hugged him back and then let go so that he could go back through the door into the bedroom before turning to go back down the stairs.

Sydney settled back down on the edge of the bed near Deb's head, taking up the hand that he had been holding earlier. "I'm back, ma petite," he murmured softly. "You're safe. I have you now."

Deb murmured in her sleep, and her hand tightened on Sydney's. He smoothed the hair back from her forehead once more, as he had over a hundred times since she'd fallen into a troubled and drug-induced sleep. It was going to be a very long night.

"Mommy?"

Miss Parker turned off the TV and then bent and straightened some of Davy's hair away from his forehead, realizing that part of the back-to-school preparations that would have to start soon would include a haircut. "What?"

"What's wrong with Deb? Why is she so upset all the time now?"

Considering what her son had probably seen and heard that day, the question wasn't all that surprising. "It goes back to your bad time in California, Davy. One of the men who took you… touched her… in a bad way."

"He told me I should watch," Davy remembered with a frown of confusion. "I thought that Deb wouldn't like what he was doing — that it was wrong…"

"It was, believe me," she nodded vigorously, sickened by the thought that Davy had been forced to witness any part of that atrocity. "It was every bit as wrong as it was of them to have stolen you both in the first place. But remembering is what is making Deb have problems."

"Why? Did he hurt her?"

She looked down into storm-grey eyes that looked so much like her own, and she could see that she wasn't talking to an ordinary eight-year-old elementary school child, but rather to the near-genius who had rescued himself and another from a nearly impossible situation. Sugarcoating the truth to such a person would be a serious disservice — no matter how tempted she was to preserve his innocence a little longer. "Yes, Davy, he hurt her. He bit her until she bled, and he hurt her in other ways too."

"Why would he do such a thing?" He really wanted to understand — the scene of Cordoba bending over Deb's inert body, moving aside her clothing and touching her in private places, and inviting him to watch, had haunted him ever since it had happened.

Miss Parker sighed. "Some men are sick that way — they make themselves feel good by doing such things."

"Is it like sex?"

"Yes," she answered cautiously, forcing herself to remember that he had probably read far more on the human condition than most eight-year-olds would have — and that the topic of sex would most likely have come up at least once. She'd have to ask Sydney about that later. "But it was a bad kind of sex, you see. Sex is always most proper between two people who love each other very much…"

"You mean like you and Daddy?"

Miss Parker had to clamp down on herself to keep from blushing furiously. "Yes, like that."

"And what the man did to Deb was bad sex?"

She nodded. "Yes, because he forced himself on her — touched her in places she didn't want to be touched by him. It makes him feel powerful and in control — but it does that at the expense of Deb feeling helpless and like her wishes don't matter. And afterwards, the experience gives her nightmares and makes her doubt her own worth…"

"Is that why she's always so sad and doesn't have much to do with any of us anymore?"

"She's trying to understand herself and her reactions right now," Miss Parker defended her surrogate daughter. "Her emotions are all out of whack — so she gets mad easily or sad easily, or…"

"Or flips out like she did today?"

She put her arm around her son. "Yeah. That too."

"Is she going to get better someday? Is Grandpa gonna fix her?"

Miss Parker hugged her son to her tightly. "I honestly don't know, Davy. I hope so. I know Grandpa's going to be doing everything he can."

"It's all my fault," Davy mumbled to himself.

His mother blinked and pushed him back just enough so she could see his face. "Whatever makes you say such a thing?"

"Because I did look," he confessed very quietly. "It was kinda hard not to."

Her stomach knotted. "And you feel guilty about that?"

"Yeah." He shifted in his seat. "I shouldn't have looked, even though it was very hard to look away. I could have closed my eyes…"

"Does Deb know that you looked?" Davy looked up into his mother's face sharply at the question. "I remember reading your telling of your story. You said that when the man brought her into the room with you, she was knocked unconscious when he put her down. Was that the truth?"

"Yes…" Davy frowned. This had nothing to do with it…

"So she didn't know. You didn't tell her you saw…"

"No!" The very idea made him sick. Besides, he'd been too busy trying to think of a way out of that house, and then later to get them to safety.

"Then she doesn't know you looked — and so that can't be a part of her nightmare, can it?"

He thought about it for a while. "I dunno — I suppose not…"

"So how can this all be your fault then?"

Davy looked down at his hands in his lap. "I should have been able to do something."

"You were tied up with duct tape at the time," she reminded him gently, "and those men were a lot bigger than you. You did what you could when the time came."

"I should have been able to do more." It was a firm self-indictment. "I shouldn't have looked."

"You did more than most boys your age could have done," she reassured him with equal firmness. "And whether you looked or not isn't an issue for Deb. Right now Deb's getting over what that man did to her, and it's going to have to be her job — it isn't going to be something any of us can do for her. Do you understand?"

"I still shouldn't have looked. That part IS my fault."

"OK," Miss Parker said very slowly, her mind spinning. There had to be a way to make him forgive himself for being victimized himself through being forced to watch. "Tell me this, what if you're at a softball game; it's the ninth inning and your team is down one run with two outs already, and you have two strikes against you. If you swing and miss and lose the game, do your teammates make you feel bad for the rest of forever?"

"No…"

"It was a mistake, right?"

"Yeah…"

"Your looking that day is like that. You made a mistake, but it's behind you now. You don't have to feel bad about it forever."

He raised guilty grey eyes to hers again. "But what if I keep remembering?"

That, Miss Parker had to admit, was a very good question. "When you find yourself remembering, turn off the TV screen in your head, or change the channel to look at something else."

Davy stared at her. "How did you know I think of my thoughts as if they were pictures on a TV screen?"

She hugged him. "Because I think of mine that way, and you are very much my son."

"Change the channel?"

"Change the channel." She gazed down at him. "Does that help?"

"Maybe," he hedged. "I'll have to see."

"Give it a try and see how it goes, then. And maybe you can talk to Grandpa about this too one of these days when he's not working with Deb — he might be able to come up with some other suggestions that would work."

Davy didn't answer, but just leaned a little more heavily into his mother's side. Miss Parker tightened her arm around her son and held him to her more closely. She was glad it was the weekend — she needed the time to reconnect with her son and help him over some of his problems.

"It's down this way." Colonel Fox looked at the paper in his hand with the filing numbers for the box they were looking for, and then pointed. He headed off down the long aisle between tall shelves with Major Meyers close on his heel. "C-1281, 1286, 1293 — here we go! 1302."

Meyers moved past his superior officer to bring the sliding ladder from further down the aisle to where he could climb it and pull out the box marked "1302." Fox reached up just as the box came away from the shelf, and Meyers lowered it into the waiting hands before climbing back down. He waited while Fox put the box on the floor and opened it to begin sifting through the upright folders within. "You say both Veracity and Black Hole are in this one?"

"Thank God," Fox nodded. "I'd hate to think we'd have to look through all nine boxes for two project names." He reached the end of the protruding file tabs, then started once more from the beginning — this time with a frown on his face.

"What is it?"

Fox didn't answer, but sorted through the folders more slowly this time, but with the same results. "They're not here!" he said in shock.

"WHAT?!"

He looked up into the dark face of one of his most trusted aides. "Veracity and Black Hole have already been removed. Somebody got to them before us." He slapped the lid back on the box. "And only God knows how long it's been since they were removed, or what else is missing."

"Whoever did it would have had to sign in, wouldn't they?" Meyers asked from the top of the ladder, and then grunted as he shoved the box back into place.

"We can hope," Fox growled. "I tell you, Steve, I'm not liking playing catch-up to this band of mavericks."

The two of them headed down the aisle and cornered the desk officer. "Give us your logs for the last two weeks," Fox demanded. "That's an order."

"I'm sorry, sir," the officer quailed before the obviously upset superior but held his ground. "The logs are classified."

"Well, I need to know as of yesterday, Corporal. Information that is supposed to be under lock and key back here is missing — and I need to find out who removed it without permission!" Fox snarled, putting his face into that of the enlisted man. "I have clearance…"

"Not to look at the logs. You'll have to talk to the man in charge of the archive before I can give you access to the logs, sir," the Corporal said in a nicely intimidated voice.

"And who the hell would that be?"

"Colonel Harris, sir. I'm sure you'll be able to talk to him in the morning when he gets back into his office…"

Fox gave a curt gesture to Meyers to follow him and then stalked from the archive room. "I don't like this," he hissed as he marched down the corridor toward the elevator. "It seems just a little convenient…"

"What are we going to do now?"

"We're going to find out the chain of authority over the archives first — and check out if any of them have any business or contact with known conspirators like Curtis or Stiller or Lewis," Fox answered glumly. "At the moment, we can't trust that ANYONE isn't involved except you and me."

Meyers blanched beneath his dark skin. "You mean this entire investigation is going to have to go off the record? We're on our own?"

"No," Fox said after a long moment of deep thought. "The investigation we have in place at the moment will continue. We just aren't going to be able to expand it where it needs to go until we find a trustworthy person much higher in rank and position to give us sanction under his authority. We don't want to tip off the conspiracy that we're onto them at all yet — they'll either vanish like roaches under the fridge when the light's turned on, or we'll find ourselves up on charges of insubordination. This thing goes way far up the line — all the way to the Capitol."

Meyers halted next to his superior next to the elevator door. "With all due respect, sir, DAMN!"

"You have THAT right, Major," Fox mused unhappily. "You have THAT right!"

"What?"

"One of these days, you're going to have to learn how to answer the phone with something like 'hello'…"

Miss Parker fell back into her pillow. "Maybe when you stop calling me when I'm on the very edge of sleep…"

Jarod was immediately contrite. "I'm sorry — I didn't know you'd already retired for the day… Everything OK?"

She sighed. "At the Centre, yes for a change."

"But…"

"Deb broke today — she had a flashback while she was at her home and really lost it big time. Syd had to rescue her. He's got her sedated and is sitting upstairs with her tonight."

Jarod stretched his legs out on the couch. "I'm sorry to say that I'm not surprised. From what I saw when she was here, she was keeping things locked down pretty tightly — things that weren't going to want to stay locked down forever." He looked over to where Ginger was sitting on the floor in front of her favorite picture window, combing the hair on her pony for the millionth time. "How's Davy?"

She closed her eyes. "Well, congratulations, Wonder-Boy — we've spawned us another Pretender."

Jarod's brows furled a little. "You talked to Sydney, I take it…"

"I can't blame him for what he did," she admitted with a sigh. "At the time, he was just using all his training to help Davy through some rough spots. And, it seems, our son decided he liked the challenge his Grandpa could throw at him, so…"

"Did he actually test him?"

"Nope. He seemed rather incensed that I thought he'd do that to his own grandson — and reminded me that if word had gotten out, it would have been bad for all of us."

Jarod nodded against the handset. "I figured something like that had to be the case. He just loves Davy too much to put him at risk needlessly."

"And the reason he didn't tell me was because he'd made a promise to Davy to say nothing about his nearly failing in school due to boredom."

"Ahhhh..." Jarod breathed. "Sydney doesn't make promises lightly."

"He says that academically, Davy has been doing high school-level work for nearly half a year — but emotionally, he's still mostly a run of the mill eight or nine year old. As for being a Pretender, he's been Pretending to be a regular kid in school, earning slightly better than average grades, for years now."

"And no doubt, Sydney's been doing his best to make sure that Davy stays emotionally well-adjusted along the way."

"That does seem to be a major thrust of his work with him, yes."

"How do you feel about it now?"

Miss Parker sighed again. "Disappointed that my son and Sydney didn't trust me enough to tell me about it…"

"Understandable. But you're not angry anymore?"

She shook her head against the pillow. "Not really. And besides, I saw that other side of Davy tonight — the side of him that took care of getting them free and rescued."

"Oh?"

"You'll never imagine why he feels so responsible for everything…"

"Why?"

"Because the man who molested Deb did so in front of Davy for a bit — and invited him to watch. And Davy didn't look away or close his eyes."

Jarod closed his eyes and swallowed hard. "Oh man!"

"I tried to tell him that he wasn't a part of what Deb was going through now at all — I don't know if that sunk in or not."

"Does he know that it was wrong?"

"We had a very interesting talk about 'good sex' and 'bad sex' tonight. I'll be glad when you're home and can take over the 'birds and bees' talks with him. And I'm going to have to have a chat with Sydney — find out what the two of them have discussed along those lines already."

"At least you know now, though," Jarod reminded her gently. "He trusted you with a pretty big secret, there, Missy."

"I know." She was silent for a moment. "Here I've been doing all the talking. How are things on that side of the world?"

Jarod's eyes lit on Ginger again for a moment, then he decided to keep his daughter's latest achievement a secret for a little longer. "We had CPS come down to the house and do a spot check and an interview. The woman was a bit of a martinet — scared Sprite pretty badly — but Rizzo was the fellow who called me to pick her up, and she finally relaxed enough to answer some of his yes-no questions."

"Did she stay with you today, then?"

"Uh-unh. Mom had her. Just as well — Ethan and I have chosen the man who's going to take my place. We did a final interview today, and he'll start work on Monday, sitting in on my sessions so the kids get a week or so to get used to him before I turn over the entire caseload."

"You mean, there's actually a light at the end of the tunnel?"

"A little one," Jarod smiled. "I miss you."

"I miss you too. I love you."

"I love you too. I'd better let you go so you can get some sleep now."

"Give Sprite a big hug from me."

"Will do. Goodnight, Missy."

"Goodnight, Jarod."

Jarod sat up as he disconnected the call, his movement catching his daughter's attention. "Mommy says for me to give you a big hug. So why don't you come over so I can do that?"

Ginger climbed to her feet and trotted over to Him. She put her arms around His neck and sighed in happiness as His arms tightened around her. "Tan-koo," she said softly.

"You're welcome, Sprite," Jarod smiled. "And you know what I think we're going to do? I think we're going to keep your talking a secret from Mommy for a while so you can surprise her with it when you see her next time. OK?"

Ginger's eyes twinkled. "'Kay…" she answered readily, even though she still nodded vigorously out of habit. It felt so good to not have the silence in the way anymore.

Feedback, please:


	8. A Clearer View

Resolutions – 8

A Clearer View

by MMB

Jarod twitched his nose in his sleep as something soft and elusive tickled the inside of his nostril. He brushed a sleepy hand across his face to dislodge the nuisance and settled back down, only to have the tickle return. He grunted and swiped at his face again, and then roused when he heard a very soft giggle as the tickle once more invaded his nose.

He had to discipline his face not to break into an amused smirk, but just barely crack one eye to peek at his daughter. She was standing at the head of his bed, bending forward just enough so that she could use the tip end of her braid to tickle at his nose. This was truly a break-through, for until now, she had not initiated play with him in such a manner. This meant she was finally starting to relax into their new relationship, and Jarod was thrilled.

He waited patiently with one eye just barely cracked so that he could watch her until she took the end of her braid and started reaching for his nose again. Then he came awake suddenly, reaching out and capturing her before she had a chance to do much more than squeak in surprise. "So you want to play, do you?" he rumbled, and pulled her over the top of him and onto her back on the bed. He then began to tickle her back in the ribs before she knew what was happening. He tickled her mercilessly until she was laughing loudly, and then pulled her to him in a hug and kissed her forehead. "Good morning to you too, Sprite."

Ginger put a hand to His cheek in a fond caress and smiled widely at him. It was a real treat to be up in the morning BEFORE Him for a change, with no sign that he was going to jump up and hurry off to the office. Maybe this could be another one of those wonderful days where He spent the entire day with her.

Instead, he pulled her under the covers and then lay his head on her tummy and closed his eyes and began snoring loudly. "Aah!" she giggled, pushing at his head to awaken him again, only to have him grab her about the middle and use his fingertips to poke her lightly in the ribs several times before holding on tightly.

"Silly pillow," he chided without opening his eyes. "Lay still so I can get some sleep."

"Aah!" Up, she urged with a laugh, pushing at his head again. She then reached for her braid — it had done the job the last time…

Hair in the ear, Jarod found, was almost as irritating as hair up the nose. "Not fair," he moped with an exaggerated protruding lower lip. "It's Saturday, doesn't Daddy get a chance to sleep in?" He swiped at the hand with the braid.

Ginger looked across her body at him, still pillowing his head on her tummy. While She had been here, She had called him 'Daddy' when speaking of Him — and even Grandma called him Daddy when she talked of Him to her. Maybe that was what He wanted HER to call him too, instead of just 'Him?' Her smile wavered a little as she tried the idea and didn't find it all that distasteful anymore. If there were anybody she could have for a REAL daddy, it would be Him. So maybe if she started thinking of Him and calling Him 'Daddy,' He wouldn't be quite so quick to give her away to somebody else when He got tired of her? "Aah, Daa-ee!"

Jarod's heart gave a leap when Ginger actually tried to say the name that he'd been hoping that she'd use for him one day. "You want me to get up?" he asked with a gentle smile.

"Aah, Daa-ee!" she repeated. "Pees"

"And you asked nicely too!" He lifted his head from her tummy and yet gathered her close again. "Do you know how much I like having my fairy child talk to me now?" he brushed her forehead with a kiss. "I am so proud of you, Sprite."

He — Daddy, she quickly corrected herself — could hold her forever. Once more her hand found his cheek and stroked it in a gentle caress. But still… "Aah, Daa-ee!" She was hungry, and the morning was already half gone.

"OK, OK…" Jarod finally gave up and threw his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. Behind him, Ginger got up to her knees and threw her arms around his neck from the back. Jarod chuckled and bent forward, giving her a modified tip and earning a cackle of laughter. Then he rose to his feet, catching her knees with his hands and settling her into a formal piggy-back ride. He jostled her all the way down the hall and into the kitchen, where with a backward lean he dumped her into a sitting position in a kitchen chair.

"You want Fruit Loops or toast for breakfast today?" Jarod asked, heading for the cupboard across the room.

"Ooops," Ginger answered immediately. She LOVED the fruity cereal that H… Daddy had bought for her the last time he'd gone to the store with Grandma.

"A lady after my own heart," Jarod chuckled and pulled two bowls down from the cupboards and dished up two helpings of the sugar-laden cereal. He turned on the coffeemaker to get his morning cup of caffeine on it's way too, and then brought bowls, complete with milk and a spoon for each, back to the table. "Here you go."

"Taan-koo," Ginger told him as she took up her spoon. Jarod stood for a moment, looking down and wondering at the miracle that was taking place right in front of him. Months of working so hard just to get her to make her monosyllabic verbal utterances before going back East had been wasted when he'd come back to find her pulling into herself and not talking at all. Her withdrawal had come, no doubt, as the result of the verbal abuse she'd weathered in the Thatcher home.

And yet now it seemed like the doors of communication had suddenly been thrown wide open — with a consistently loving environment apparently being the key. He was discovering Ginger was a polite child — not even needing schooling to use 'please' and 'thank-you'. Considering her background, where she would have picked up such habits was beyond him — but he wasn't asking too many questions at this point.

Right now, all that mattered was that a child that had been tightly and defensively closed down behind a wall of silence had suddenly begun to blossom — and that he intended to do his level best over the next two days encourage her to continue the process.

"Carl!" Fox stuck his hand up and waved to catch the eye of the naval office making his way across the parking lot near the Norfolk JAG headquarters.

"Ted? Is that you?" The silver-haired officer veered away from his course toward the glass doors of the complex and marched toward a man he hadn't seen in over ten years. "How the hell are you? I heard you got bumped upstairs."

Fox pumped the hand of Lt. Colonel Javitz eagerly. "Yeah — about the same time you got your berth here defending AWOL sailors and drunken marines." He smiled across in the face of his old friend. "God, it seems like just yesterday…"

"It's been a helluva lot longer than that," Fox shook his head warningly. "We both had a lot less grey — you especially."

There was a moment while Javitz gave his old friend a measuring gaze. "I seriously doubt you're here just to reminisce over old times and keep me from punching in on time." Fox's face closed down into seriousness. "Thought so."

"I need your help, Carl."

"In an official capacity?" Javitz was shocked. Theodore Fox had been a straight-shooter even in college, where the two had been in the ROTC together. He couldn't imagine the man getting himself in trouble with the law.

"It may come to that," Fox answered enigmatically.

Javitz cocked a skeptical eyebrow at his friend. "Are you trying to be deliberately mysterious, or…"

"I need to know whether investigating a superior officer whom I suspect of being a part of a conspiracy — potentially criminal — could be considered insubordination."

"Not if you have evidence to show at an arraignment, giving cause for your suspicion and consequent investigation…" Javitz lowered his voice. "What the hell is going on?"

Fox thought for a moment. He had trusted Meyers automatically, because the man was his assistant and a damn good officer. Did he dare trust in his memories of Carl Javitz being equally square with the world? "I think I've tripped over something big," he said finally, "and I'm not exactly sure how far up the food chain it goes except that at least ONE of the principles involved is a Senator."

"What's going on?" Javitz looked around, then reached out for Fox's arm and pulled him toward a protected side of the administration building. "Talk to me, Ted."

"How high's your clearance, Carl?"

"Damn it!" Javitz scowled. "You want my help or not?"

"Damn it!" Fox fumed back and then decided he had nothing on which to base his distrust of his old friend. "All right. Have you ever heard of a place called The Centre?"

The Navy man thought for a moment and then shook his head. "Sounds terribly intimidating though…"

"Well, about a week ago, I received a shipment of documents from the Centre, along with an envelope-full of cashier's checks. The Centre was returning funding and research materials it SAID it had been working on for us that it no longer felt comfortable continuing. I checked through some of the material before sending it down to secured storage, and you've never SEEN the like of the work they'd been doing. Black Ops stuff from start to finish."

Javitz nodded, listening closely. "And I take it nobody in Command knew anything about it?"

Fox shook his head. "They weren't admitting to it, at any rate. Anyway, two days ago, I get a call from one of the top brass at The Centre, telling me that they had been receiving visits and calls from military officers and one Senator trying to get them to reconsider their decision and restart work on some of the projects. I authorized and then listened in on a phone conversation between a full-bird Air Force Colonel and a research chemist, where the chemist told him to take his project and shove it. Then yesterday, after having a tap put on the phone of this officer, I caught a call between him and HIS handler, a General Curtis — who just happens to be an attaché to one of the Joint Chiefs. Curtis was urging him to use blackmail and threats to get this one project restarted."

"So, go after General Curtis," Javitz recommended. "You have the tape…"

"No wait — this gets even stickier. Meyers and I go down to the secured archive last night to remove the documentation on the projects that seem to be of the most concern to these officers — and it's gone. We're told the sign-in logs are classified, and we'd have to get the permission of another full-bird Colonel to see them."

"Since when are sign-in logs classified?" Javitz asked, his brows furled.

Fox merely nodded. "And you see what I'm up against."

"You suspect this other Colonel of being in cahoots with the others."

"And my investigation has hit a wall — especially since the only way for me to proceed logically would be to see those logs. But to do that, I'm going to have to investigate this Colonel and HIS superior to see whether either of them have any connection to the known members of this group before I can approach either one of them."

Javitz let go of a low whistle. "You really are up against it on this one, Carl," he said finally. "You ARE pushing toward insubordination here if anybody catches a whiff of what you're doing. You could go up the chain of authority — speak to a General, or maybe even one of the other Joint Chiefs not associated with this General… Curtis, you say?… to ask to work under HIS auspices. But Hell… you might just clue in everybody that you're onto them the moment you speak to anybody…"

"And there you have my dilemma." Fox commented in a brittle tone.

"How the hell did you figure you could trust ME?" Javitz wanted to know.

Fox looked at his old friend. "I didn't. I took a chance."

Javitz just shook his head. "Shit. From the sounds of it, you need to make those gut-instinct moves as rarely as possible, my friend."

"Tell me something I DON'T know."

"Well…" Javitz thought for a moment, following a line of thought to its conclusion and finding it worth mention, "you say that one of the people involved with this is a Senator?"

"Yeah…"

"So, how about going to another Senator with a proven track-record of straight-shooting and investigative moxie?" He shrugged at Fox's blank look. "Sounds like it's a vigilante type of organization you're looking into — and that you're getting set to go maverick by necessity to hunt them all down. Ideally you'd need another maverick — a maverick with the authority to get things done — at your back."

"But a Senator is civilian — the insubordination charge will come from the military end." Fox protested.

"Getting a civilian involved would mean that some of the nuts and bolts of the investigation wouldn't necessarily have to fall on YOUR shoulders to carry out," Javitz answered calmly. "What's more, once the civvies have enough on the group, you could have it arranged that the evidence against the officers involved all gets dumped into JAG's lap — which means the military could then clean up after it's own. Any civil charges can be made against the involved Senator and other civilians and stay in civil court."

"And do you know this Senatorial maverick — and are you sure you can trust him?"

"Her," Javitz corrected, "and yes, I'd trust her. Her name's Ashland — she's from…"

"California — I've heard of her." Fox nodded, no longer doubting that Javitz could find such a person. Becca Ashland had a reputation for being less than intimidated by the military machine, having brought to light several instances of military impropriety over the course of her career. "The question now is, how do I get to her?"

"You let me make a couple of phone calls, and I'll have her call you," Javitz answered easily, then added in explanation. "My wife works at the Capitol, and we know Senator Ashland personally. She's pulled strings with me a couple of times in the office here — taking advantage of the friendship a bit to take care of business that needed tending — it's about time I get to pull back for once."

Fox had his pen out and was writing a phone number on the back of his business card. "Have her call me on my cell after hours," he directed. "God only knows if I've already kicked over one or two alarms and have a bug on my home phone. I just got this thing this morning."

Javitz put out a hand to first take the card and file it in a breast pocket, then shake the hand of his old friend warmly and firmly. "You take care of yourself, Ted — and let me know if I can be of anymore help."

"Thanks, Carl," Fox shook his friend's hand vigorously. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate this."

"Just get those the good on those bastards so we can put them away for a long time," Javitz told him determinedly. "The US military doesn't need that kind of bad apple in the mix — at any level."

"You'll be hearing from me," Fox promised and the hurried across the parking lot toward his car.

Javitz already had his cell phone out of his pocket. "Sandy? Hi sweetie. I… What? No… do me a favor, will you? Call Becca and have her give me a call here at the office…" He listened. "No, nothing's wrong. I just need to talk to her, that's all…" He listened again. "Yes, I'll be back in time for Jennie's party. Just call Becca for me, will you?" He listened again. "Thanks, honey. See you in a bit…"

Deb walked slowly and carefully down the stairs, her injured foot hurting her more than she had expected after the workout she'd given it the day before. Grandpa had kept his promise and sat with her all night long, keeping her safe and watching over her from his post in the easy chair by the window. When she had finally awakened fully, they had talked quietly and without any strong emotion about what had happened the day before. Slowly, gently and very firmly he had walked her through a review of her actions the day before — her reasoning, the consequences of her actions, and the implications of what might have happened had the circumstances been different.

In the end he made certain she couldn't avoid the truth that she was NOT OK — she was NOT ready to go out and take up her regular activities and relationships again. Grandpa hadn't chewed her out or been hard on her at all, but merely put up an unbiased mirror and dared her to look at what she'd said and done the day before with an objective eye. Ultimately what had convinced her was getting her to admit to herself that the smell of an old, unopened room and the feeling of summer heat had been all it had taken to make her lose touch with reality completely. That had brought the lesson home in no uncertain terms. And then he'd let her cry on his shoulder for a while after she'd finally seen what he'd had to show her and at long last accepted that she needed help.

Eventually he'd let her go with instructions to go take a long, hot shower while he made his way downstairs and let Kevin strap him back into his therapy machine. He would be down there, he told her, and they would continue their talks once she was freshened up and had eaten something. The shower had done her some good — it had given her a chance to review things in her own mind and come to a couple of decisions of her own. She didn't want to live her life like this. She would cooperate with Grandpa in trying to put things in proper perspective, and she would stop trying to push people away anymore. She needed them.

As she rounded the newel of the stairs, she looked into the living room. Kevin glanced up at her from his reading and gave her a nod of recognition before looking back down at the paper in his hand. It was the first time since she'd come home that he'd actually acknowledged her presence and responded to her at all — not counting the time he'd spent on the phone with her yesterday.

"Kevin?"

His head shot up immediately, his blue eyes wide. "Yeah?"

She limped through the archway. "I just wanted to say thanks for staying on the phone with me yesterday."

The young man's tight face relaxed, and a small smile teased at his lips. "I'm just glad I could help out a little," he said humbly, then tipped his head at her slightly. "You OK?"

Deb shook her head. "I don't think so," she admitted in a soft voice. "But I'm working on it." She gazed at him sadly. "I'm sorry I made such a scene when I came home from California — and I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

"Don't worry about it," Kevin soothed. "I should have thought — Sydney had warned me not to make any big movements… I'm sorry I screwed up too…" His words failed, but the expression in his eyes was hopeful. "So… can we be friends again?"

"I may not be the best of company right now," Deb warned him carefully. "And my mood is probably going to suck for a while."

"I don't care," Kevin told her firmly. "You can yell at me if you want to — as long as I know that underneath it all, we're still friends. You were my very first friend here on the outside," he said with a sigh. "I've missed you and felt horrible figuring it was my fault we weren't friends anymore. Please?"

"We're still friends," she said gently. "I just think I'm getting the better part of the deal right now."

"We'll see." Kevin was smiling. "Go have some breakfast," he urged her then. "Sydney's waiting for you." He watched her turn and walk from the living room toward the kitchen, his heart lighter than it had been for days. Somewhere, during that horrible time she'd had yesterday, something had shifted — and he'd gotten his friend back, kind of.

Deb moved straight through the kitchen and into the den, where Grandpa looked up at her immediately. "There you are!" he smiled at her, and then frowned. "Where's your breakfast?"

"I'm not really hungry," she said softly. The fact was her stomach was still in knots and didn't feel like it could hold much very successfully.

Sydney was shaking his head. "A glass of milk and a couple of cookies at least, ma petite. You haven't eaten anything for a whole day — your body AND your mind needs at least a little something for energy."

She simply didn't have the strength to argue or defy him — and yesterday had taught her the reality that Grandpa really DID know what he was talking about. She turned and shuffled back into the kitchen. A glass of milk she could deal with. Maybe one cookie…

Sydney set aside the reading he'd been doing, closing the folder and moving it aside from the coffee table. All of Deb's inner walls were down now — her breakdown the day before had been a massive one and very complete. Now would begin the most delicate part of her therapy — helping her to accept the nightmarish memories that had flooded in on her and deal with them appropriately without trying to hide from them anymore.

Under normal circumstances, and considering the kinds of things she'd told him and their emotional closeness otherwise, he knew that the wisest move would be to call in another therapist immediately. It was one thing to help a relative stranger to deal with memories of assault and violation — it was another thing altogether to hear such things from one's own granddaughter. But Deb trusted him — as much as she could trust anyone at the moment — and he simply would have to put utterly aside his emotional reactions as grandfather to play the part of therapist.

Deb re-entered the den, her milk in one hand and a cookie from the cookie jar in the other. Sydney saw that it was only one cookie rather than the two he'd suggested, but decided to let this small battle slip by without comment. He'd gotten her to eat SOMETHING, at least. She limped quietly to the side of his daybed, then sat down next to him, put her food on the coffee table and laid her head on her grandfather's chest again. Sydney's arms came up automatically, letting her find some security and safety with him while she had no defenses of her own to work with.

Therapy could wait for a little while. He could be a grandfather for her until she'd gathered some strength…

Dr. Lauren Mitchell slipped an elastic headband around her auburn curls and pulled her gardening gloves from her pocket as she surveyed her flowerbed. It had been a couple of weeks since she'd done any weeding, and there were several infant dandelion sprouts and other intruders in the otherwise immaculate bed. It was a warm afternoon now, but the fresh air and sunshine would be good for her — and there was a pitcher of lemonade in the refrigerator for when she was finished as a treat.

She turned off the water to the sprinkler and then repositioned the little metal sprayer to another section of the flowerbed before putting the water back on again in a low, gentle circle. How she loved her weekends, when she could leave behind the sterile world of a laboratory and bury her hands deep in the living soil! She knelt on the ground and bent to the first of the weeds.

Stiller waited until the chemist had turned her back to the street and the rest of the world and begun carefully pulling weeds before moving around the end of his car and beginning to walk up slowly behind her. Curtis said he wanted Mitchell turned by whatever means necessary to do their bidding and bring Veracity back online — and if scaring the shit out of her was the only way, then…

A glance up and down the street showed him that there were no watchful eyes that he could see. Mitchell lived on a quiet street of smaller and older homes — there were few signs of children or active adult life. Stiller pulled the switchblade from his pocket and walked quietly up behind the woman on her knees.

Before she could even let out a squeak of surprise, he had bent over her and slipped one hand over her mouth from behind. "This is just a friendly visit," he whispered harshly into her ear as he made an elaborate showing of flipping the switchblade open and laying the sharp edge against her straining neck. "There are people who don't appreciate it when they get told no."

He pulled her head tighter against him, stretching her neck just a little more and running the very tip of the blade across her throat. "It isn't often that people like you get a second chance to reconsider unwise decisions, little lady." He kept his voice harsh to disguise it as best he could. "You will be contacted again — and it would be in your best interest to have reconsidered your answer and change it. Otherwise…" He drew the tip of the blade across her throat again, this time actually letting the razor-sharp point cut through the very top layer of skin. "You don't want to know what happens next, do you?"

Mitchell shook her head frantically, her eyes wide and terrified. Her heart was pounding in her throat — she'd never been so afraid in her life.

"Good girl." The hand at her mouth shifted then and pinched her nose closed too. "Good night, Doctor," was whispered into her ear. Mitchell fought against the strong arms restraining her until finally her eyes began to flutter closed.

Stiller deposited the chemist on the ground next to her weeding very carefully and stepped back. She'd be a few moments recovering from her near suffocation — time enough for him to slip away. He turned and sprinted back to where he'd left his car up the street and climbed in, speeding away even as he saw her begin to struggle to sit up.

Mitchell stared after the pastel-green sedan, too far away and still too much in shock to take note of any license number. She pulled off her gloves and put a hand to her throat, and then drew her hand back in consternation when she felt warmth and wet there. In terror, she looked down at the blood on her fingers. After several attempts, she awkwardly regained her feet and then staggered toward her steps and her front door to call 9-11 — and then the Centre.

They HAD to protect her from these people!

"Mommy, what are we doing here?" Davy asked curiously as his mother pulled into the driveway of the big house she'd always told him was his 'other' grandfather's — the 'other' father that she never wanted to talk about.

"Well, I was thinking," she replied as she turned off the ignition and unbuckled her seat belt, "that when Daddy and Ginger get back from California, we won't all fit in our little house. Ginger needs her own room, don't you think?"

Davy thought for a moment and then nodded. "But is this house ours too?"

Miss Parker's brows worked up and down in brief bitter emotion. "In a manner of speaking. I inherited it when my father k… died — but I didn't want to use it for myself. It was just too big and too much for me at the time, so I've kept it all closed up all these years." She looked up at the imposing white façade. "I grew up in this house."

"It IS big," Davy commented with some awe. Certainly MUCH bigger than the comfortable little house on the very outskirts of town that was the only home he could remember now.

Miss Parker looked at the house with a very strange mixture of emotions. "Yes, it is," she agreed. "Come on," she urged, pushing her car door open, "Let's see what shape it is on the inside."

Davy was all eyes as he walked with his mother up the wide front steps to the veranda that stretched around to both sides of the house from the front. There was a hanging swing to the right of the front door. "You might want to wait until I have workmen make sure it's safe," Miss Parker cautioned him even as he made his first step toward the swing. "After that, however…" He turned back to her and saw the indulgent smile and knew that SHE knew that he'd probably found one of his favorite places to be at this new place already. "I used to love that thing when I was a kid."

The massive oak and glass front door yielded to a moderate push at last, and Miss Parker stepped into the foyer for the first time in over a decade. Above her head, the chandelier was dusty and floating with cobwebs in the first breath of breeze that had touched the fixture since the last owner had vanished into the dark waters of a storm-tossed Atlantic Ocean. All was as it had been before — only the white dust covers over the upholstered pieces of furniture were unfamiliar and turned familiar surroundings into a surreal environment. Dust and cobwebs hung on every corner of every room, from every picture frame and lampshade.

"Wow!" was all Davy could say at the grandeur of the house. He'd seen places like this in movies — but never in his wildest imagination had he thought that he'd come to live in a place like this! "It's REALLY big!"

Miss Parker had moved forward, past the door that opened into the formal sitting room to the left and the more informal parlor to the right — forward to the dining room. The massive dining table that, at the moment, could seat eight but which she knew could be extended to seat twenty was covered with a thick and even coat of grey dust. But it wasn't the table she was staring at — it was the door at the opposite end of the room, which, as usual, was closed.

"What's in there?" Davy asked reverently, pointing at the very door she was staring at.

"The library," she answered quietly, as if still afraid of making too much noise and bringing her father charging from whatever he would be doing in the library with fire in his eye and a closed fist.

"Can I see?" Davy asked carefully, sensing the hesitancy in his mother's mien.

"Sure," Miss Parker said after taking a deep breath. "Come on." She led the way to the massive oak door and pushed it open. The hinges complained only a little bit as the door swung back. Once more, everything was as she had remembered it — only the dust covers gave it the air of unfamiliarity. The walls were covered, floor to ceiling, with rich and dark wood bookcases that were filled with an astonishing and, she knew, valuable collection of literature. Her father's desk sat so that he had had the light from the huge window at his back, making the need for artificial light virtually unnecessary until after dusk.

"This was your dad's office?" Davy asked quietly.

"Mmm-hmmm," she nodded. "I wasn't allowed in here very often. He liked to work without being disturbed." As she stared at the desk, a discarded paper lifted it's corner in her direction from the errant breeze, and she shivered. It would take time for her to ever feel comfortable intruding into this most private inner sanctum. "Let's check out the kitchen, shall we?" She held out her hand to her son.

Other than the dust that seemed to cover everything in sight, the kitchen looked exactly as it had on the last occasion she'd been in it. Miss Parker walked over to a cupboard and pulled open the etched glass to reveal dishes that she'd known ever since she had been a small child. She pulled one of the fragile bone china saucers from the stack and stared at it for a long moment.

Davy had left his mother's side when she'd headed toward the cupboards, choosing instead to aim his investigation in the direction of what was evidently the back door to the house. Shifting aside curtains that rained dust onto his fingers at the slightest movement, he stared out the water-spotted glass at a huge and formerly landscaped back yard. "Wow!" he commented again at the thought that the trees here were even bigger than the ones at Grandpa Sydney's — and at the thought of making a tree-house retreat in one of THEM, maybe even with Daddy's help and advice, was downright delicious.

"I thought you'd like that part," Miss Parker commented at the look on her son's face. "I can see a new tree-house in your future, I bet…"

"Can I?" He turned excited grey eyes on her. "Really?"

"Absolutely," she answered, feeling a little of the oppression she'd felt since entering the house lift. This was the way to deal with the many memories and feelings this house would naturally pull out of her, she decided — let the Now fill it until there was no more room for bad memories. "I always wanted one myself."

"Really?"

"Yup." She leaned back against the cabinet. "So, what do you think?"

"I think we're going to take an awfully long time getting it clean before Daddy gets back," Davy told her seriously after a moment of thought.

"We haven't even checked out the upstairs yet," she reminded him. "Wanna go upstairs and stake out a room for yourself?"

Davy's smile was brilliant, and he ran through to the front of the house and then up the stairs, making the kind of noise that 'Daddy' would never have allowed in his house if he'd been still alive. Take that, you old grump, Miss Parker thought disrespectfully. It's about time this house learned how to LIVE rather than merely exist — and I'll be damned if I force my son to treat this place like a sacred icon. It's a home, not a cathedral!

Just to prove her point — to herself as much as to any residual ghost — she broke into a run and followed her son up the stairs making almost as much noise as he had in the process.

"You're a very lucky lady," the ER physician told Mitchell frankly. "If that man had made this the least bit deeper, this injury would have been much more severe. There!" He finished washing the long, thin, shallow cut with antiseptic. "The bleeding should stop in about ten minutes. Keep it clean but open to the air — it should heal normally."

There was a stir of movement outside the curtains of her examination area of the ER and the voice of the police office who had accompanied her into the hospital rumbled warningly. Then the deep voice of the Centre Security officer with whom Mitchell had spoken earlier stated clearly, "We can take it from here, officer. Thanks.". Evidently it was the changing of the guard, for the curtain was suddenly pulled open slightly, and Chip Harrison, followed by Tyler, stepped boldly in. "Doctor Mitchell — are you all right?"

"Not exactly," she snapped, extending her head upwards so that both men could see what had been done.

"Damn!" Tyler swore softly. "And in full daylight too!"

"This isn't exactly what I signed on for when I started working at the Centre," Mitchell told him dryly.

"We'll be seeing to your security now, ma'am," Harrison assured the woman somberly. He looked at Tyler. "Looks like our 'problem' just got significantly worse."

"I think, Doctor Mitchell, we'll be moving you to a more secure location," Tyler told her. "There's an apartment building on the Centre grounds with an empty apartment — it would be harder for any attacker to get to you there, and easier for us to increase security there without causing alarm to neighbors."

"I don't want to move," Mitchell complained bitterly.

"It's just for the time being, until we have this problem under control," Harrison replied. "I'm sure you'd rather not live worrying about being attacked again while your back is turned."

Mitchell looked up at him with frightened dark eyes. "This is insane!"

"Yes, ma'am, it is," Harrison agreed.

"You take her back to her house to pack up what she needs. I'll go out to the apartment building and make sure there's a habitable apartment waiting for her," Tyler ordered. "I'll call you with an apartment number as soon as I have one, and I'll call Miss Parker too, to see if she has any other thoughts or directions for us."

"Yes, sir." Harrison opened the curtain for Tyler to slip through again, then turned back to the research chemist. "When you're ready, ma'am, I'll be just outside the curtains here."

"Thanks." Mitchell watched the Assistant Security Chief slip through the curtains and reached for her blood-stained tee shirt. She did feel safer, knowing that she had a personal bodyguard for the time being. Having the police respond as well as the ambulance had also helped her feel safe — and she'd managed to make her statement while the details of the incident were still fresh in her mind. And maybe moving to a small apartment not far from the Centre itself wouldn't be such a bad idea after all until the madman who had attacked her was behind bars. "What about my telephone?" she called out, suddenly remembering that she had family that enjoyed calling her in the evening to keep in touch.

"We'll have your calls forwarded, ma'am," Harrison answered over his shoulder. "I'll have Tyler arrange that after he talks to Miss Parker."

The ER physician helped the woman slip to her feet from the examination table, then held onto an elbow for a moment. "You OK, Ms. Mitchell?"

"I'm fine," Mitchell responded, glad when Harrison pushed through the curtains again and held out his arm. "Thanks." She hung on tightly, choosing not to let her sense of self-sufficiency force her to walk alone and unaided. There was a time when accepting a helping hand — or arm, as the case may be — was not a bad thing.

Sam gave a very gentle tug on Mei-Chiang's arm. "I don't think you want that one."

Her almond-shaped eyes came around immediately to look into his, and she allowed herself to be pulled away from the aging Volkswagen beetle. "I don't?"

He continued to shake his head and led her toward a newer looking Honda Accord. "I didn't like the sound of the engine when he started it up," he explained firmly. "There was a whine that sounds like something is thinking about falling apart. You don't need to buy something just to have to turn around and pay a fortune to get it fixed."

"There is more to this than I realized!" she said with a confused shake of the head. "I thought buying a car would be easier."

"It is easier, if you don't mind getting gypped," Sam told her ruefully. "At least I know a little something about engines and cars, and I can help save you money on that score."

Mei-Chiang smiled suddenly. "I am grateful for your help," she told him softly, meaning every word.

He smiled back down at her. "What do you say we go back to my place and see what we can come up with in the newspaper classifieds? You don't need the car immediately — after all, you said you still needed to get your license…"

"You're right," she agreed. "I'm doing things a little upside-down. I've just wanted a car for a very long time…"

"Don't worry," he bent down toward her, "you'll have a car soon — and a good one. I promise." His fingers found her elbow. "And I know a good mechanic who can check out whatever you really want to make sure it's in good condition."

Mei-Chiang turned away from the used car lot and walked back to Sam's comfortable sedan at his side. He opened the door for her and waited until she was comfortably seated in the passenger seat before closing the door and moving to take his place behind the wheel. "I have some apple juice in the fridge to cool us down when we get home too. I don't know about you," he sighed as he adjusted the air conditioner vents near him, "but it's HOT out today."

"With the fresh air coming in from the ocean, I don't feel the heat so much," she answered as the car moved smoothly forward. "At home, the buildings were so close together that sometimes it seemed like the air didn't move at all. And when it got hot, it was VERY hot!"

"Do you ever think about going back?" he asked, turning the car onto the highway that led out of town and southward toward Blue Cove.

She shook her head. "I have no one left there," she said with a tone of finality.

"But…" He glanced at her quickly. "What about your family? Aren't they still there?"

"They sold me," she reminded him. "When they did that, any connection to them was cut. My loyalty belonged to the brokerage that then educated me. I had some friends, but I'm sure most of them are gone now — their services sold to someone else, like mine were." Her face grew hard. "If I were to try to go back to my family, the dishonor to them and to me would be very great. They would be forced to sell me again — only this time to be a prostitute."

Sam bristled at the very idea. "I guess that does mean you can't go back, doesn't it?"

Her face softened again. "I have Xing-Li — she was with me at the brokerage and came to America with me when Lyle brought us here. She has called me Older Sister and I have called her Younger Sister for a very long time. She is the only contact from home I have — or want — anymore. She the only family I claim."

The two of them traveled along in a very comfortable silence for a while. Mei-Chiang enjoying the sight of the scenery between Blue Cove and Dover in the daylight for the only the second time since she'd arrived at the Centre, the first being when they'd driven to Dover a few hours earlier. "So much green," she commented softly, her chin in her hand.

"It is pretty here," Sam agreed. He just couldn't understand her placid acceptance of what amounted to wholesale abandonment by her family. "Are you happy here, then?"

After thinking for a moment, she decided the answer she'd given to Tyler when he'd asked the same question was the best one. "I'm not unhappy here," she responded gently. "I have a roof over my head and good clothing to keep me from the cold, a very good job..."

"And friends?" He turned and looked at her.

Her ebony eyes met his and softened almost immediately. "I do now," she replied with a soft smile.

"Good." Sam turned back to his driving with a sense of satisfaction. He was finding that he very much enjoyed the company of this retiring and beautiful woman — and that the more time he spent with her, the more time he WANTED to spend with her. For the first time since he'd settled down to work for the Centre, he was finding his solitary life less than what he wanted. He liked having Mei-Chiang at his side.

Mei-Chiang settled back into her seat and watched her chauffeur with a fond eye. She had thoroughly enjoyed their car-shopping trip, even though they hadn't come away with any real prospects to consider. Having him with her, his sports jacket over a comfortable tee shirt making a delightfully informal fashion statement, had made the two salesmen who had attended her very respectful. With Sam around, they were very cautious with heaping praise or accolades upon a vehicle unless it genuinely seemed to merit it. Sam had followed her patiently and attentively from one vehicle that caught her eye to the next, asking the salesmen pointed questions about state of repair or mileage that let them know they were dealing with no man's fool.

And now he was taking her to his home. She could see the expression of contentedness that had painted his face, and it made her feel good to know that she was part of the reason it was there. She wondered briefly if he would ever consider honoring her little apartment by letting her prepare him a meal someday — or if Xing-Li's necessary company would be unwelcome.

It had taken a while for the fact that she had actually survived Lyle's planned end for her to sink in, and even longer to accept that Miss Parker, while an exacting boss, was also fair and approachable. Now, it seemed, she was finding that the company of American men — one American man in particular, actually — was bringing her alive. She wondered if he could possibly know how much her world had become brighter and more worth looking forward to since he had very quietly and deliberately placed himself in the middle of it.

Sam happened to glance in her direction at just the moment that she was looking at him with a soft smile on her face. Feeling brave, he reached down with his right hand and captured her left hand and just held it warmly behind the shift lever. Mei-Chiang's smile widened just a little bit more, and Sam felt his heart lift. His greatest fear was that she would be put off or intimidated by the huge difference in their size — but she seemed to be unaffected by the fact he towered over her, or that his hand seemed to swallow hers. In fact, her fingers were turning within his grasp — holding him back.

Their hands remained linked for the rest of the return trip to Blue Cove. Whereas they had chatted the entire way to Dover about what kind of car she'd been looking for, Sam took the time on the way back to point out the scenery along the two-lane highway that she'd missed before. He had lived in the area long enough that he could supply local stories for some of the landmarks he pointed out, and he enjoyed hearing his companion's gentle chuckle as some piece of local lore hit her funny bone.

But Mei-Chiang grew quiet and her eyes widened as Sam carefully steered his car into his driveway and pulled it to a stop. "This is your house?" she asked in amazement.

By Hong Kong standards, it was magnificent. There was a well-trimmed lawn of green all the way around it with a white, picket fence marking the edge. The trees on the side and toward the back were large and mature, throwing pools of shade onto the ground to offer respite from the sun. The drive was long and went down the left side of the house toward the tiny garage in back.

Sam smiled at the tone of amazement. He didn't know much about the orient except that the cities tended to be very crowded — especially where the economic situation of the populace was more distressed. "Like it?" he asked with pride as he came around the front of the car and opened the door for her.

"It is very nice!" she breathed, rising with the help of his outstretched hand. "I didn't know you were such a rich man…"

Sam beamed. This was the first time he'd actually HAD someone over to his house. "Let me show you the inside," he suggested and unlocked the back door. He waited for Mei-Chiang to enter first before following her in, and sniffed at the air. The spaghetti sauce was filling the house with mouth-watering and savory smells.

"You have been cooking while we were gone?" she inquired curiously. "You didn't have to watch it?"

"A good spaghetti sauce needs to cook slowly for the better part of a day," he told her, showing her where she could deposit her purse on a small table by the back door. He crooked a finger at her and lifted the lid from the large pot on the stove, stirring the crimson liquid. "Does it smell good to you?"

"Yes," she admitted honestly. As if to attest that she was telling the truth, her stomach growled at the scent of the savory steam. "I'm sorry," she said, one hand to her mouth to disguise her dismay, another over her stomach as if to quell a repeat grumble.

"Don't apologize," Sam said with a chuckle. "It's the sound of an appetite — something I can appreciate." He put the lid back on the pot and then put his hand in the small of her back. "C'mon, let me show you the rest of the place." The tour wouldn't take long, he knew — his house was a small one with two bedrooms upstairs and everything else downstairs.

Still, his guest was suitably impressed, even with the size of the bedrooms upstairs. "At home, a family of six or eight would be able to live in a home this size," she told him quite seriously as she stared into his guestroom from the small landing.

"I don't think we'd be able to get a family of six or eight people MY size to fit in this place," he replied with humor.

She turned bright ebony eyes on him. "There aren't all that many people your size where I was raised," she admitted with an answering smile. "They mostly come single-serving size, like me — not giant economy size…"

"I think I could get used to having someone single-serving sized around here more often," he replied with sudden warmth. "How well do you think you could get used to being around a giant economy sized bear like me?"

The almond eyes were instantly serious. "Oh, I think I could get used to that very easily."

As if drawn by magnetism, Sam stepped closer to Mei-Chiang and brushed the back of his fingers along her cheek. "I keep worrying that I'll break you," he said very quietly and intently. "You're so small — so beautiful – I'm afraid to…"

"I'm not quite so fragile as that," she answered just as quietly, her hand meeting his and her face turning up to his searchingly.

The temptation was simply irresistible, and Sam bent down to brush his lips against hers gently. The contact was electric, and his other arm encircled her shoulder to pull her closer. Mei-Chiang found herself enchanted by the way he didn't push to make the embrace more intimate, and yet almost disappointed that he didn't. Perhaps he simply didn't find her attractive enough…

He continued to hold her close as he pulled back a bit to look into her face. "I didn't mean… I mean… Please don't be angry… offended…"

She blushed and looked down, pressing her hands against his flat and solid chest. "I'm sorry I'm not the kind of woman you…"

"But you ARE, damn it! You're everything I've ever wanted," he interrupted her with quiet vehemence. "I didn't even know what I wanted until I saw you. Don't you know how hard it is for me to keep from sweeping you off your feet and doing everything in my power to make it so that you would never leave?"

She was again astounded. This gentle giant of a man genuinely wanted her? Her — the daughter of an impoverished man, sold into indentured servitude and then passed along to a corrupt and lecherous businessman for his sport — a woman with no honor, no status? She let her hands move across the broad expanse of chest, feeling the muscles that were beneath the thin white cotton cloth ripple under her gentle touch. She had an unexpected opportunity standing before her — all she had to do was take it, if she wanted it. "You would not have to sweep me off my feet," she told him hesitantly and then looked up again. "If you wish me to stay…"

Sam stared. This beautiful woman who had brightened his whole weekend already was neither angry nor offended at his forwardness, but rather returning a shy affirmation of mutual attraction. He bent again, determined to test his theory. His lips touched hers again, this time with a little more clear intent — only to find himself quickly ensnared in return as her arms snaked around his neck. The kiss suddenly deepened, and his heart began to beat a rapid tattoo against the walls of his chest. He dipped and swept one hand behind her knees and lifted her up into his arms, even though she'd told him it wasn't necessary. Now he could straighten to his full height with her in his arms and with her arms around his neck, their lips still tightly pressed together and tongues slowly dancing erotically around each other.

He leaned back against the guest room doorjamb as he continued to plunder her lips and mouth shamelessly and felt her respond eagerly to his touch. Her fingers threaded through and tangled in his hair as she too began to feel herself transported with desire. Slowly, agonizingly, their lips finally parted, only to each seek out a new place on the other's neck. Sam nibbled on an ear delicately, feeling her tremble slightly in his arms, and then he whispered breathlessly into that ear as he felt her begin to return the favor, "It's been so long… You need to… If we don't stop now…Mei…"

Mei-Chiang lifted her head and looked into the brilliant blue eyes of the man who had with so little effort set every nerve ending in her body on fire. She could see in his eyes the effort it had taken for him to put the brakes to his own stampeding urges and give her the chance to escape him while she still had the chance. It was a form of honor and respect she had long since abandoned hope ever seeing demonstrated towards her by any man, much less an American. Coming from Sam, it was like another form of intimacy — subtler, but more potent yet. She considered for a moment the wisdom of putting the brakes on their embrace and taking the time to think through the consequences of a choice that, once made, could not be taken back.

But for once she wasn't in the mood to be properly circumspect. His kisses and his gentle regard for her in the midst of all this had started something too big to be ignored any longer. Embers of longing within her that had been but awaiting the flame of passion to ignite them simply wouldn't be banked again. She trusted him — she knew without a doubt that he wouldn't deliberately hurt her. And as she slowly pulled his face forward and then pressed her lips tightly against his, deepening the kiss herself again to give him his answer, she knew she had dreamed of this moment ever since he'd taken her into his arms to dance with her.

Sam needed no further encouragement. He straightened again and resolutely walked across the landing, pushed open the door to his bedroom with a foot and carried Mei-Chiang inside, his lips not once leaving hers.

Like Sam had done only two days before, Tyler looked about the older apartment building with some consternation. Yes, it was conveniently on Centre property and thus much easier to secure — but it was also dingy, as if long-forgotten by the maintenance staff. Only one balcony showed signs of habitation, and as he watched, Tyler blinked to see Xing-Li come through the balcony door with a watering can for some of the potted plants that lined the small cement slab.

He jingled the key ring with the master key and individual apartment keys, then walked forward toward one old and weathered door, and then opened it. The apartment smelled as if it had been unopened and abandoned for a long time, and the furnishings within were covered with a light brushing of undisturbed dust. The former tenants had obviously been Chinese, for the décor on the walls were two scrolls with elaborate calligraphy, and the furniture low and oriental-styled.

He walked through into the kitchen and saw, on the stove as if just waiting for its owner to reappear, a wok and a tea kettle. Cabinets with no covering doors stored plain china dishes — it looked like a four-piece service — and the lower cupboards held other cooking pans. He turned on the tap to make sure that at least there was clean water running in the pipes.

A turn through the single bedroom told him clearly that the inhabitants — whoever they may have been — had simply left one day and not returned. The tiny closet had several brocade cheongsams hanging neatly on one side, and the small chest of drawers to the left was filled with modest lingerie items. The small bathroom still held toiletries — a hair brush, perfume bottle and modest make-up.

With a sigh, Tyler headed for the small living room, pulling his cell phone from his pocket. He pushed a pre-programmed number, spoke to maintenance and gave instructions for a four-man crew to be dispatched immediately to clean up the apartment and remove the abandoned personal affects of the previous tenant. On a whim, he walked out of that apartment, up the stairs and knocked on Xing-Li's door.

Her face grew solemn as startled as she pulled the door open. "Mr. Tyler, sir. How can I help you?"

"Do you know who was living below you?" he asked, pointing.

Xing-Li's face grew sad. "When we first came, there were two who lived there. Chao Li-Mei fell ill almost immediately. Then for a long time, just Tam Su-Lin was there by herself. She was Lyle's secretary just before Mei-Chiang took over the position."

"What happened to her?"

The young Chinese woman was shaking her head. "We were never sure, sir. All I can say is that she was not happy with her position — she said she was frightened of Mr. Lyle. Then one day, she went to work, and just never came back. The next day, Mr. Lyle came down to the clerical pool for Mei-Chiang to take her place…"

Tyler blinked. "Did you call the police?"

Again she shook her head. "Mr. Lyle told us that she had been promoted to a newer and better position — and that she wouldn't be coming back." The ebony eyes flashed fear at him. "We had heard stories… We were… afraid… to call…"

"It's all right," he soothed. "That's all in the past now."

Xing-Li looked up at him a little more bravely. "If I might ask, sir, why are you interested?"

Tyler pointed down to the other apartment again. "Because we are intending to make use of the apartment below you as a safe place for someone to stay for a while, and I hadn't expected to find the place looking as if it were occupied." He thought for a moment. "I know that maybe this isn't quite proper in Chinese terms, but if there's anything in the apartment there that you'd like to have…"

She shook her head immediately. "No, sir. I only have the room in here for my own belongings and those of Mei-Chiang."

From below came the sounds of a vehicle engine, and Tyler looked out to see the three maintenance men piling from a Centre van. "I have to go get these guys working. I didn't mean to disturb your weekend."

The tiny apology dissipated the expression of worry and sadness from her face. "You were not disturbing me, sir. With Mei-Chiang gone, I'm taking care of small tasks. It was pleasant to have the distraction."

"Mei-Chiang is gone?"

"Yes, sir," Xing-Li reported with a smile. "She is spending the day with Mr. Atlee."

"Sam?!" Tyler's eyebrows rose and a slow smile spread over his face. "Well I'll be damned."

"Sir?" Xing-Li had her head tipped like a bird, trying to follow the direction of his words.

"Nothing," he chuckled at her. "Thanks for your time."

"Thank you, sir," she smiled back at him and closed the door as he began back down the stairs.

Tyler pointed into the apartment and told the crew foreman, "We have about an hour to get that place cleaned out. Collect all the personal items in boxes or sacks, and otherwise get it aired out and immaculate. Understand?"

"Yes, sir!" The crew chief immediately turned to his help and began delegating tasks. Tyler pulled his cell phone from his pocket again and hit another number on his autodialer.

"What?" Miss Parker answered, pushing back the hair from her face as she put the device to her ear.

"Miss Parker, Tyler. I'm sorry to bother you on the weekend, but…"

She shook her head. "What's up?"

"There was an assault on Doctor Mitchell this morning – you know, the chemist who decided to tell Colonel Stiller to take a hike with his Veracity…"

"I know who Doctor Mitchell is," she replied. "Was she hurt badly?"

"More terrified out of her wits than injured," Tyler answered, watching the efficiency with which the men in the vacant apartment were gathering up the belongings of the missing Chinese girl. "Chip and I have decided for the time being to move her to a more secure location – the apartment building on the Centre grounds where your secretary lives."

Miss Parker nodded, impressed. "Not bad, Sir Edmund. I take it Doctor Mitchell is cooperative?"

"Once Chip and I explained how much harder it would be for someone to get at her again, she was. I'm just calling to give you the update and ask if there's anything else you can think of that we should do…"

"The police were called, I hope…"

"Yes, ma'am. She called them and THEN us."

"Good. Do we know if it was Stiller that attacked her today? Can we turn over a copy of the tape with him threatening her as evidence supporting our suspicion?"

Tyler was shaking his head. "She said the voice was disguised – so while that means that it probably WAS Stiller, there's no way for her to be sure. She didn't see her attacker."

"Damn!" She thought for a moment. "Get her settled into that apartment and then put sweepers inside her home and set up surveillance inside and out. If they come for her again, I want them to walk into more than they bargained for. Forward her calls to the new apartment, but talk the police into reactivating the tap on the line. If she gets a follow-up call to this attack, pressing her to restart Veracity again, I want it on tape."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And call Sam – tell him there's an impromptu meeting at my place tomorrow morning at nine. We need to figure out a way to help this jerk slip up."

"Uh…" Tyler hedged. "Sam's busy right now."

"Oh?" Miss Parker's brows rose on her forehead. "And you know this how?"

"Xing-Li told me that he's spending the day with Mei-Chiang."

Miss Parker chuckled at the tone in his voice. "I'm not that surprised. So leave a message on his machine – he'll get it when he gets back in. If there's any other emergencies tonight, call us both; but otherwise let him have his day in peace. We'll see him in the morning."

Tyler shook his head. How she knew some of these things, he'd never know – unless Mei-Chiang had talked to her… He shook his head again, deciding to leave the mystery alone. "OK. I guess I'll see you at nine tomorrow then."

"See you tomorrow," Miss Parker told him and disconnected the call, then yelled up the stairs to where her son was working at cleaning the room he had chosen for himself. "Davy! If you still want to make that softball game this afternoon, and if I'm going to get any cooking done for Grandpa today, we're going to have to get going…"

Feedback, please:


	9. Changing Perspectives

Resolutions – 9

Changing Perspectives

by MMB

Dr Mitchell blinked as Chip Harrison's Centre sedan took a right turn that she'd never noticed before after entering through the Centre gates. The narrow strip of asphalt let along the perimeter of the Centre property until it turned eastward again toward a line of cypress trees. That was when she saw the dismal little apartment building. She looked over at the Assistant Security Chief askance. "And you're expecting me to stay here?"

"Very few people even know this building even exists, Doctor," Harrison answered evenly, disciplining himself not to show his own start of dismay at the state of the building as compared to most of the other Centre outbuildings. "Besides, it's quiet here, and easy to make completely secure."

"It looks abandoned," Mitchell commented dryly as they pulled up into a parking spot in front of the building. "Does anybody else even live here?"

"As a matter of fact," he replied, "your upstairs neighbors are two Centre secretaries."

In removing the seat belt, the retracting safety device grazed along the edge of the shallow cut at the base of her throat that had been left by her attacker, reminding her of WHY she was here and not in her own living room. "After you," she breathed unsteadily as she opened the back door of the sedan and fetched one of two heavy suitcases she had packed under the security man's watchful eye.

For all the dinginess outside, the interior of the little apartment Harrison took her to was surprisingly clean and neat. Surprisingly, on the walls were scrolls of beautiful black Chinese calligraphy, complete with descriptive calligraphy and the vermilion stamp of the artist on the side. On a small shelf above the top of the bookshelf was a small brass statue of a Buddha, a gold bowl in front of it obviously ready to receive an incense stick. "I take it the last tenant was Chinese," she commented quietly.

"That was our understanding," he nodded.

Mitchell walked toward the rear of the apartment past a kitchen that sparkled. Her eyes caught sight of the wok on the stove and noted it as another sign that the previous tenant had been Chinese. The mattress of the bed was bare, although there was a plastic sack with fresh linens and pillows that had been left by the workmen. The bathroom still smelled of recent scrubbings with antiseptic cleansers.

"I suppose I can be very comfortable here," she finally admitted, tossing her suitcases on the end of the mattress. "What about my phone?"

"We're setting that up with the phone company as we speak, as well as another tap on your line. If that Colonel Stiller or any of his associates tries to get in contact with you…"

"Oh God!"

"…As a follow-up to the attack – to push you to rethink cooperating with them on Veracity…"

"I would NEVER…"

Harrison put a hand on her shoulder. "We know that, Doctor – obviously these people think that they can put enough pressure on you to change your mind. That's why we want you here, where we can watch out for you more closely. And if Stiller calls again, we'll have him on tape again."

"How long will I have to stay here?" she asked plaintively.

"As long as it takes to know that it's safe for you to return home," he answered with a shrug. "We take protecting your welfare very seriously, Doctor."

"I know," she slumped to seat on the end of the mattress next to her suitcases, "and don't think I'm not grateful. I just hate this!"

"I can appreciate that," he replied sympathetically, but he knew he had reached the end of the platitudes that he could reasonable offer her without starting to sound redundant. The time had come for him to let her begin to make herself at home. "Why don't I let you unpack and start making this place a little more your own. Here's the key to the front door — it fits both the deadbolt and the doorknob…" He handed her a single key on a key chain with the Centre logo printed on a brass oval. You'll find the refrigerator well-stocked with all sorts of meats and vegetables and dairy. There's a pantry cupboard above the fridge with hopefully most of the dry-goods you'll need for the time being…"

"What about my car?" Mitchell suddenly remembered. "I hope I'm not going to be stuck here ALL the time…"

Harrison blinked. He HAD forgotten that. "I'll have a sweeper team deliver your car to the parking lot here after a bit," he promised. "But if you do decide to go somewhere, I'd appreciate it if you'd put a call into my office so that I can assign a bodyguard to you."

Mitchell nodded – it wasn't exactly complete liberty and privacy, but she knew that she'd be feeling safer if she knew there was a sweeper watching over her even when she went shopping or out to visit friends.

Harrison shifted from one foot to the other. "Is there anything else you can think of?"

Mitchell looked around her with a glum look. "I don't think so," she answered eventually. "Will I be able to see the guards on this place?"

He smiled at her. "If you can see us, we're not doing out jobs right, Doctor. Don't worry if you don't see anybody. Trust me, we'll be keeping you quite safe." He turned to leave.

"What are the names of my neighbors upstairs?" she called out suddenly, making him turn.

"Ping Xing-Li and Hsu Mei-Chiang," he replied.

"Do they at least speak English?" she queried dryly.

"Very good English, both of them," Harrison chuckled. "Xing-Li is Mr. Tyler's personal secretary, and Mei-Chiang is Miss Parker's personal secretary. You should have no trouble communicating with either lady."

"Thanks," she said as he turned away again. She sat on the end of the mattress staring around at her new bedroom and eventually heard the sound of the front door closing carefully. With a sigh, she arose and walked into the bathroom and turned on the light. In the wide mirror, she examined the thin, red line that stretched from one side of her throat to the other with shaking fingers.

And finally broke into tears of fear and horror.

Sam brushed a wayward tendril of Mei-Chiang's hair away from his mouth and then settled the thin, cotton sheet just a little more comfortably over the two of them to keep the draft from the air conditioner from chilling their perspiration-dampened skin. This was It, he decided in contentment. This was the shape of the life he wanted – a life that included Mei-Chiang in his arms from now on. It was as if everything that he'd done at and for the Centre had been leading to this moment of absolute certainty that he'd finally found what he'd been looking for without even knowing that he'd been missing anything. He'd been alone for so long, the feeling of completion he felt with her at his side was intoxicating.

He hadn't been lying to her – it had been a VERY long time since he'd even been tempted to make love to a woman. Having a job and a life so centered on the Centre and its intrigues had long since made relationships or even brief affairs practically impossible, and the drought had left him almost shaking with eagerness. But then Mei-Chiang's initial surprise and fearful hesitancy when she'd discovered that he was 'giant economy sized' in more ways than one had forced him to proceed very slowly and very carefully, no matter how much he might have been tempted to do otherwise.

His patience and persistence and gentle caresses proving he had no intentions of rushing her or disregarding her feelings had eventually soothed away the hesitancy and fear that had extinguished her previous mood. And then his determined self-discipline at keeping his own needs firmly under control had made it possible for him to slowly fan her arousal back into a white-hot flame of desire that had her reaching for him eagerly at last. Still, he had made very careful, slow and patiently gentle love to her at first, finding it a uniquely erotic experience to pause and feel her body slowly accommodating his at every step of their joining. Only later, after her kisses and movements told him that she wanted and was ready for more at last, had he allowed himself stronger, more purposeful and driving movements – and before long, his tight hold on his control had vanished. He gave in to his urges completely – and rejoiced as she responded to him enthusiastically, meeting his passion with her own in equal measure. Eventually he had the supreme satisfaction of hearing her cry out his name in the throes of her pleasure — just before he rumbled her name hoarsely as he surged and took his own release at long last.

And now she was curled next to him, contentedly nestling into his side and under his arm with her head on his chest as if she had always belonged there. Her soft skin was like warm velvet against his side, moving smoothly and gently against him with her every breath. Sam tipped his head down, tucking his chin into his chest so that he could look at her face as she lay against him. Her eyes were open and he followed her gaze. He found himself looking at the mirror over the chest of drawers that reflected back at them the view of the two of them together in the huge bed beneath the crisp, white sheet. And once again he felt the certainty that THIS was the shape of his life to come.

"What are you thinking," he asked, smoothing his hand up and down her arm, still enchanted by the feel of her skin.

She stirred, lifting her head and resting her hands against the thin, soft fur of his chest and looked up at him. "I'm thinking how lucky I am to have had this moment of pleasure with you," she answered softly.

"I think I'm the lucky one," he challenged, his hand coming up and cupping her face. "I've spent a whole lifetime looking and waiting for you, you know…"

She shook her head. To find a man who hadn't just taken her quickly to ease his desire but who had actually restrained himself so as not to hurt her and also made certain to give her more than ample pleasure in return was like a miracle. She kissed the chest beneath her fondly. If only she were worthy of him – she could find it very easy to fall in love with Sam, to want to make it her life's work to make him happy in all ways. She was halfway in love with him already, even though she knew better. That being the case, it was up to her to be the practical one. "The time will come, Sam," she said gently and sadly, "when you are ready for a woman who is worthy of you. When that time comes, I will be grateful that you gave me this gift of…"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sam interrupted quickly. "Maybe you didn't understand what I'm trying to say. I'm saying that there ISN'T any other woman that I want – I want YOU. Here, with me. From now on." He thought about it for a moment, and decided that yes, he definitely wanted that too. "As my wife."

Those beautiful almond-shaped ebony eyes sparkled sadly. "You honor me more than I deserve," she breathed, letting herself imagine just for a moment what it would be like to be this man's wife — knowing it could never be more than a dream. "But I bring no honor, no prestige, no status to your household. I was trained as a secretary and a concubine, not a wife."

"Damn it, Mei, I don't care about honor or prestige – and I don't give a damn what you were trained to be."

"You should care," she replied, looking up into his face again. "You are a rich man, an important man. You should have a wife of the proper station, one who brings you honor and status and can give you children you can be proud of. The Centre is an important organization, and you hold a position of authority at the Centre that demands much respect. As you meet others from other organizations, a wife of the proper station will know how to interact with these people in a way that will benefit both you and the Centre…"

"And you don't think you fill the bill, is that it?" he asked, astounded.

"I can bring you no status, no honor," she said flatly.

"If there's any lack of honor around here, it's in the fact that I made love to you before I married you — and I refuse to feel ashamed of what we just did," he retorted. "Besides, what use is status if there's no love in the marriage? That makes marriage into nothing more than a business arrangement."

"I cannot give you children you could be proud of," she insisted.

"And why couldn't I be proud of any children you give me?" he pressed.

"Because they would be half-Chinese," was the answer.

"And you think I WOULDN'T be proud of them for that reason?" he asked in amazement. "My God, Mei, I would love them and be proud of them because they would be OURS — yours and mine." He thought for a moment. "And don't tell me you don't know how to interact with corporate executives. Miss Parker wouldn't have you as her secretary if THAT were true!"

She tucked her head against his chest again. "You do me too much honor," she complained softly, aghast at the tiniest spark of hope igniting rebelliously in her heart at his stubborn resistance to reason and stomping at it mercilessly with a heel of pragmatism. Why did American men have to be so impractical in such matters? Didn't he know how much it hurt her to have to protect his honor and reputation this way — to have to decline this offer of something she should not have, something she deep down inside wanted so desperately?

"So I do you too much honor," he said gently, his hand at the side of her face again and lifting it so that she would look at him again. "Big deal. This is America. Marry me."

"You will change your mind someday," she said in a small voice. And as he gazed at her, he saw for the first time in those beautiful black eyes a glimmer that told him that she wanted him too, easily as much as he wanted her. But she was afraid to reach out for the future lest it be stolen cruelly away from her. Considering her background, it was a reasonable fear.

"I wouldn't do that to you," he soothed gently, his fingers tracing the line of her chin. "I had a long time in California to think about you, to wish you were with me, to miss you, to dream of you. When I came back, I was afraid that you had forgotten our date, or had gotten tired of waiting for me. And when I heard your voice on my machine the night I got home…"

"I told you…" she started.

"I know what you said, but others had made promises too — long ago — that proved empty," he told her darkly. "You are a beautiful and intelligent woman, Mei — any man would be lucky just to get you to look in his direction for a moment. And I had been gone a long time — plenty of time for you to have started looking in other directions."

"Sam…"

"I was falling in love with you before I left," he said with simplicity, "and I'm very much in love with you now. The fact is that I don't want to live without you in my life. And I don't care if this isn't proper, or if it's happening too fast, or anything about status or what anybody else might say. I've waited a long time for the right woman to come along, and now she has — and THAT'S all that matters to me. Marry me."

"You deserve better." She was weakening, he could tell.

"I know what I want." His arms tightened around her. "And I'm not going to change my mind. I want you. Say yes, Mei. Please!"

She spent a long moment looking deeply into his earnest blue eyes, trying to discern even the slightest hint of indecision. But he was determined, she could see, and once more she had an unexpected and extraordinary opportunity in front of her. She could tell him 'no' and probably lose him — it was obvious he wouldn't be comfortable with the Chinese custom of taking her as his mistress until an advantageous marriage came along. OR she could tell him 'yes' and take a chance on a future beyond her wildest dreams as his wife — to live the dream for real — at least for as long as the dream lasted.

The tiny spark of hope in her heart burst into a small flame as she took a deep breath and rebelliously decided to gamble once more on stepping past propriety and practicality. "Yes. I will marry you," she whispered very, very softly, as if afraid that if the world were to hear her declare her heart's desire, it would snatch it from her grasp. Even if her dream only lasted a short time, it would be longer than she'd ever hoped for in the first place. She would have been happy for a little while.

"Yes!" His face split wide open into a huge grin and he dumped her into the pillows so that he could bend over her and kiss her with a brief and flaring passion that left them both breathless again. "Say it again!" he demanded, grinning down at her triumphantly.

She gazed up into his electrified face and smiled as she reached up a hand to his cheek. "Yes, I will marry you," she repeated, just a little louder, "you sweet, impractical, giant economy sized bear."

He bent and kissed her again, a gentle and loving kiss that was shatteringly sweet and told her all she needed to know about just how much this man cared for her. "Say it again," he ordered softly, framing her face with his hands.

"Yes, I will marry you," she said more surely, convinced by this third iteration that Sam had no intention of ever letting her try to talk either one of them out of the decision later. "And I promise you that I will gladly spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy."

"You've already made me the happiest man alive," he said tenderly and then kissed her again very softly. He then threw back the sheet and, apparently unconcerned about his state of undress, rose from the bed to walk over to the chest of drawers. He pulled out one of the top drawers and removed a box from it, then something small from the box. He walked back to the bed and sat down next to Mei-Chiang again, and then captured her left hand in his. "This was my mother's," he said and slipped a ring on her finger, "one of the few things of hers I still have. I want you to have it now as my promise to you — and I want you to wear it from now on as your promise to me. We WILL be married — and soon."

Mei-Chiang raised her hand. The two diamonds were not large or flashy, but rather small and exquisitely set in a simple white-gold setting with triangular sapphires on either side. The entire piece sparkled brightly in the afternoon sun — and it fit her as if made for her, which told her a lot about Sam's mother. But before she could ask him anything, he had bent to kiss her again deeply. Stretching out on the bed next to her without breaking the kiss, he slipped back beneath the crisp cotton sheet so that skin met and moved over skin and then made very clear his intention to make love to her again. Within moments, his touch and fiery kisses had driven all thoughts of questions from her mind. This time there would be no insecurity, no hesitation between them — only soft sighs of desire and anticipation and then finally, fulfillment.

A little later, the telephone on the nightstand rang four times before being picked up by the machine downstairs — but by that time, the two of them were far too engrossed in each other to much notice the garish and short-lived noise.

"Sam — this is Tyler. Sorry I missed you. Miss Parker wants us to meet at her house tomorrow morning at nine to discuss developments in our little problem with the military. Talk to you later." Tyler disconnected the call. "Damn it, Sam," he swore at the device on his desk, "why aren't you at least answering your cell?"

As if the telephone had a mind of its own, it began ringing at him. Tyler blinked and then picked up the receiver again. "This is Tyler."

"Mr. Tyler, this is Colonel Fox."

"Ah!" Tyler leaned back in his chair. "I think you were then next person on my 'to call' list. What can I do for you?"

"I was wondering if it would be possible for us to meet this afternoon," Fox told him in a steady voice. "There have been some developments that I think you should be aware of."

"And there have been some on this end that you probably should be informed about as well," Tyler nodded. "How soon can you get here?"

"I can be there in an hour," Fox said in relief. "At your office?"

"I'll have some coffee ready."

"Until then, sir." The military man disconnected.

Tyler frowned and then dialed another number. "Chip? Tyler. Are you free?"

"Just got our good doctor settled into her new digs and assigned security for the area," Harrison announced, walking back toward his car.

"Good. Meet me in my office in an hour. We have Colonel Fox coming in — and it sounds like just because it's a weekend, things aren't taking a break."

Harrison opened the car door and climbed back in. "I'm on my way back in now — I'll be there in just a few minutes." He disconnected and then turned the key in the ignition.

Kevin sighed. The house was quiet — Deb had drifted back upstairs to nap, obeying her grandfather's expressed wishes without question for a change. He knew the morning had been very hard on her — he'd heard her sobbing several times in the den while Sydney's soft voice had continued to speak to her in comforting tones. Lunch had been a very subdued affair, with Deb still struggling with her morning's therapy and Sydney's fatigue from not having rested well the night before and then provided intense counseling the whole morning long very obvious in the older man's demeanor.

Miss Parker had stopped by some time after Deb had vanished upstairs, but then gently excused herself from both cooking duties and visiting until the next day when she'd seen the exhaustion in Sydney's face. At her urgent insistence, Sydney had agreed to put off any reading that afternoon in favor of taking advantage of the warm and quiet to get all the rest he needed. She'd quietly told Kevin that she'd be across the street at the park watching Davy's softball game if she was needed and then left.

With a sigh, he stood and carefully stacked the file folders that he'd determined contained information that the Centre would ultimately benefit from reinstating into the system back into one of the large cardboard boxes. The material neither he nor Sydney could see as having any value whatsoever he had begun collecting in paper grocery sacks in a corner. The next time Tyler called, Kevin intended to ask the young man if the next delivery of boxes could include a pickup of sacks to be taken to the Centre incinerator — and the boxes they had been through and cleared for retention returned to data-processing for re-entry into the mainframe.

Between them, he and Sydney had gone through three of the huge boxes of data now. The reading had been fascinating some of the time, downright sickening at others. While Sydney accepted most of the depravity evident in the proposals and progress reports of the more disturbing projects with calm and almost fatalistic resignation, Kevin still found himself aghast at times at the inhumanity. He'd even had to talk long and hard with his mentor a couple of times when the data he'd been reading had been the result of research Jarod had been doing under Sydney's auspices. During those talks, the deep sadness and guilt at what he'd been a part of for so many years was readily apparent in Sydney's eyes, although he discussed the research and whether there was any potential benefit to hanging onto the information with honesty and frankness. Kevin quickly learned that, unless absolutely necessary, he would spare Sydney such talks in future.

Finished with his housekeeping but unwilling to dig into a new box for yet another thick layer of files, Kevin wandered out into the front yard and then across the street to the park. On the other side of the duck pond he could hear the cheers rising from the softball game that Davy was participating in. He didn't feel like becoming another spectator. He didn't know what he felt like. He let himself drop to a cross-legged position against one of his favorite trees and lean back against the trunk. Maybe he needed to take a nap too…

"Where've you been lately?" asked an impertinent voice.

Kevin opened first one eye and then the other. Crystal had plopped herself into a similar cross-legged posture only a small distance away. From the looks of her clothing, she had neither changed nor bathed since the last time he'd seen her. "Busy," he answered briefly, remembering the name she'd called him during their last conversation. "You know us geeks…" He fell silent. The insult still stung.

"You aren't doing your fancy dance exercise thingie," she pointed out.

"Nope," he agreed without elaboration. He'd practiced after lunch in the backyard. He hadn't thought to practice in the park again since the last time he'd run into her.

"How come?"

He looked over at her with mild frustration. "I don't feel like getting insulted while I'm practicing," he said honestly.

"I didn't insult you…" she complained, bristling.

"You called me a geek and some other Chinese name, and asked me a whole bunch of stupid questions. You even made snide comments about my uncle. You weren't exactly being friendly," he retorted, closing his eyes and leaning back against the tree again.

She rose, angry. "Well pardon me for breathing, Mr. High and Mighty."

Kevin took a deep breath and expelled it in the breathing exercise Ikeda-sensei had given him to calm and ground himself in times of stress. He sat very still and simply didn't respond to her, hoping that his withdrawal would give her an indication that he'd prefer she leave him alone.

"Look, I'm sorry, OK?" she said finally, the belligerent tone in her voice decidedly less. "I didn't mean it to sound like an insult."

He straightened his head and opened his eyes to look up at her. "Then why did you say it that way?"

Crystal swayed nervously from one foot to the other, her hands sawing at her side aimlessly. "I was just trying to joke with you. Couldn't you tell?"

"No," he answered honestly and closed his eyes again. "That's something I was never taught."

"God!" she shook her head in disbelief. "What kind of place did you grow up in anyway?"

"A not very nice one."

She plopped back down on the grass near him again. "Me either," she commented darkly. When he didn't look up or respond, she picked a dandelion and began twirling it in her fingers. "Sooo… What do you do for fun?"

At least she had his attention again. "I read. I do my fancy dance exercise thingee, as you call it. I play video games with my little cousin…"

"Go to movies?"

"Once." His heart twisted. How long ago it seemed since Deb had taken him to see that movie...

"Only once?"

"Only once."

"Wanna go?"

He stared at her, then patted his pockets. "I don't have any money…"

"Psh!" She waved her hand at him as if dismissing the idea completely. "We don't need that."

"If we get in without paying, we're behaving dishonestly," he complained insistently.

"So?"

Now he stared at her even harder. "I can't do that!"

"Why not?"

"Because…" He blinked and thought. "Because it's wrong to be dishonest."

"Hmmph!" Crystal got to her feet again. "Never had you pegged as a prude."

"A what?"

"I'M going to go see a movie — you can just stay here and count dandelions then," she challenged, throwing her flower at him.

"I'll see you later, then," he replied without moving. "Enjoy the movie."

She walked away a short distance, and then came bouncing back to pull at his hand and try to bring him to his feet. "C'mon, Kevin! It's no fun going to a movie alone."

"No," he replied, pulling his hand free. "I don't have any money on me."

She folded her arms across her chest. "What is it with you? It's not like we'd be stealing or anything…"

"Yes it is," he answered firmly. "And you know it."

Her face fell a bit as his firm stance struck a chord within, but then she lifted it in bravado. "I gotta go," she told him casually and, with a flip of the hand, flounced off across the grass toward the duck pond.

Kevin shook his head. Of all the people in his world, he understood Crystal the least. He rose and walked slowly back across the street and up the walk to the house. He had work to do — and it was time to get back to it.

"Colonel Fox." Tyler greeted the Air Force officer at the front door to the Centre annex with an extended hand. "Good of you to come out on a weekend."

"Life doesn't stop just because the government does," Fox commented dryly. "Thanks for seeing me."

"Come on to my office," Tyler gestured for the man to lead the way down the corridor and then opened the door for him and led him past an empty secretary's desk and through the inner door. "I think you've met Chip Harrison, our Assistant Chief of Security…"

"Yesterday, listening to the tap on Doctor Mitchell's phone," Harrison replied, half-standing from his chair and shaking hands firmly. "Good to see you again, Colonel."

"I'm not quite as good at making coffee as my secretary is," Tyler announced candidly, "but I think this will do. I did promise you some." He poured three Styrofoam cups of the hot, dark liquid and handed out the other two before taking his seat behind his desk. He took a sip of his and immediately promised himself to watch Xing-Li a little more closely on Monday. "So, what's up?"

Fox seated himself. "It seems we each have information the other needs to hear about. I might as well tell you mine first. My assistant and I made a trip to the secured archives to transfer some of the data that you people returned to us — specifically that concerning Veracity and Black Hole…"

"Black Hole?" Tyler frowned and reached one more time for the folder of discontinued projects that Miss Parker had left with him. He flipped through a number of pages until he found the one he wanted and read a few lines. "Good God," he breathed, shaking his head, then looked up again. "You were saying…"

"The data is gone," Fox blurted out.

"Gone? As in… vanished?"

The officer nodded tersely. "And it seems the sign-in log for the secured archives is classified information — I can't check on who visited the archives since last I was there without permission from a superior officer."

Harrison was frowning. "Since when are sign-in logs classified information?"

"Exactly my point," Fox grumbled. "Between information gathered by us through taps on Colonel Stiller's phone lines and information you've provided, it seems we have tripped over a very healthy conspiracy within the military-industrial complex. Your Miss Parker said she spoke with a Senator about this — so it's possible that this extends into some of the highest corridors of power in Washington."

Tyler settled back in his chair. "Sounds like you've hit a brick wall, Colonel."

"Well, I might have, if not for a very good friend in JAG. I'm going to be talking to a Senator a little later this evening — hopefully she'll know who to put me in contact with to get the authority behind me to remove some of those bricks. I just thought that I'd give you people a heads-up so that you can speak to whatever scientist was in charge of Black Hole."

Harrison was taking notes in a small spiral notepad. "I'll see if I can get in touch with that person before the meeting tomorrow," he promised Tyler.

"Now," Fox said, leaning back in his chair, "you boys have some news for me?"

"Doctor Mitchell was attacked at her home this morning," Tyler told him somberly. "In her statement, she said she never saw her attacker, but I'm willing to bet almost anything that it was Stiller."

"Was she badly hurt?" Fox wanted to know, sitting up straighter in alarm.

"A very superficial cut," Harrison answered, drawing a forefinger across his throat in a gesture that made the Air Force officer grimace. "I think it was more meant to threaten her with more dire consequences if she didn't play ball with him."

"This is a serious charge, gentlemen. If Stiller did attack Mitchell, it could be a toe in the door with this group. I can pull him in, subpoena a search of his quarters for whatever kind of weapon Doctor Mitchell says was used on her. If we can get a DNA match to her blood, maybe we'll have the leverage to get this slime to rat out some of his superiors in return for a reduced term at Levenworth."

"At the expense of tipping off the others that we're onto what they're doing when we haul Stiller in," Tyler reminded them with a shake of the head.

"Do you still have the tap on his phones?" Harrison asked the military man. "If he talks about the attack to anybody…"

Fox's face grew cautious. "We'll have to be careful. If we picked him up, it's even money as to whether we could get him to turn on his co-conspirators or have him just clam up. Nine chances out of ten, however, I'd bet you good money the others would let him hang out to dry to save their own butts if it came down to that. No, when we close the net, I want to catch some BIG fish along with the minnows!"

"Obviously, our main focus here at the Centre is going to continue to be protecting our personnel from assault and battery and preventing any of those obscene projects from getting restarted with our people or equipment," Tyler informed Fox with a tone of determination. "But any information that we get that might help you in building your net…"

"Find out who was involved in Black Hole, and see whether they've been approached like Mitchell was. Meanwhile I'll talk to the Senator and see what she can get started on her end." Fox stood. "I take it you have Doctor Mitchell moved to a more secure location?"

"Damned right we do," Harrison agreed grimly.

"You may need to do the same for the Black Hole scientist as well," Fox warned. "I just wish I knew what Black Hole was about…"

"I can tell you, but you'll be sorry you asked," Tyler shuddered. "It was a combination of drugs and psychological pressure and re-education." He opened the folder to the page he'd looked at himself only a little earlier. "The drugs and psychological pressure were designed to implode a subject's personality completely — not necessarily cleanly or painlessly, mind you — leaving them a blank slate for a completely new personality to be installed through retraining." He slipped the page back into the folder. "I'll have a copy of this made for you," he promised, patting the folder that was starting to be invaluable to him. "It describes each of the projects we sent back to you and specifies the scientist in charge."

Fox pulled out another of his business cards and began writing on the back of it. "I want us to coordinate any efforts we make, so we're all working from the same page. The card has my office number — my home phone and cell phone numbers are on the back. Use any of them if you need to."

"Thank you for coming," Tyler rose and held out his hand. "And good luck on your investigation."

"Thanks," Fox shook his fellow Texan's hand. "I'll need it."

"I did as you suggested."

Curtis frowned briefly until he finally recognized the voice on the other end of the line. "And…"

"And I'll call her again tonight, after she's had time to think about things a little bit more. I left her a reminder that will take a few days to go away completely," Stiller announced with some pride, "and I'm thinking that should do the trick."

"Wait a minute," Curtis frowned again. "You're telling me YOU did it, Danny? You didn't just get some hoodlum from Dover…"

"And watch them screw up and kill her by accident, you BET I did the job myself. I wanted the job done right." Stiller paused. "I thought you'd want to know."

"Good. I'll be happier when you call me to tell me that woman is ready to behave herself and take on Veracity again."

"It's just a question of time, General. Any word on Black Hole?"

"Lewis is working on it. But the good news is that we've got the documentation safely out of Pentagon hands and into our own now." Curtis snickered. "Harris really pulled a good one – he dummied up a shipment in, then officially refused it due to lack of space and switched the boxes with our stuff in them for the refused shipment before sending them back to our contact in Norfolk."

"Oh, now THAT'S rich," Stiller sounded duly impressed. "His name doesn't have to appear on any log, and you say we got the whole works out at once?"

"Every last bit of it." Curtis' voice sounded smug. "I'll be hearing back from the Committee on the Hill tomorrow night, Doug. I sure would like to be able to report that we've started having some success in getting the Centre back online with us."

"I'm doing my best," Stiller insisted. "As soon as I know anything, I'll be in touch."

"See that you do," Curtis ordered briskly and then disconnected the call.

"GOT your ass, you damned son of a bitch! You done hung yourself good THAT time!" Major Meyers gloated automatically in the coarse accent of his native East Los Angeles as he pushed the stop button on the tape recorder that had caught every last damning word of the phone call. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a programmed number.

Colonel Fox pulled out his cell phone while keeping a careful eye on the straight turnpike. "Fox."

"It's Meyers, sir," the Major announced in triumph. "Just wait until you hear what we just got from the tap on Stiller's line!"

"Kevin?"

The young Pretender raised his head from his reading. Deb was leaning against the edge of the archway between the living room and the foyer, her waist-length hair loose and flowing over her shoulders and her face looking as if all the supports had been knocked away from her. He had to restrain himself from flying to his feet and moving quickly to her side. "Hey there," he answered instead, "I didn't know you were up."

"I looked in on Grandpa, and he's still asleep," she said with vague confusion.

"He was really tired," he answered gently. "Miss Parker and I talked him into taking it easy for the rest of the day."

"That's what I thought," she wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold. "Can I come in and sit with you for a while?" she asked finally after a long pause. "I don't want to be alone right now."

Kevin set aside the papers he'd been browsing from the top layer of the newly opened box and straightened. "Sure," he replied with what he hoped she'd find an encouraging smile. "I don't have to read this stuff ALL the time, you know…" He watched her move hesitantly from her spot in the archway to take a precarious seat on the edge of the couch at the far end away from him. "You look so different with your hair that way," he commented gently.

"The braid gets all messy when I sleep on it, and I didn't want to brush it out again," she blinked, surprised that he'd noticed her appearance. "You've seen me wear it this way before…"

Kevin shook his head insistently. "Uh-unh," he countered. "You've always worn it pulled back." His blue eyes smiled at her. "I like it this way."

Deb was touched and smiled at him, and then looked down at her hands as she felt the tears begin once more to well up at the gentle and unthreatening compliment.

He frowned in consternation. "Did I say something wrong?"

She shook her head, frustrated with herself. "Don't mind me," she told him, wiping at an eye with the back of her hand. "My emotions seem to be all over the map these days."

"I just wish I could say or do something to help," he said in a plaintive tone. "I'd do just about anything…"

"I know," she replied softly, trying very hard to let the concern in his voice warm her injured spirit. "I…" She stopped and looked at him very cautiously. "What do you know… about…" She waved her hand to indicate herself.

Kevin thought about his answer for a moment. "I know what Sydney told me," he answered truthfully.

"What did he say?" Deb steeled herself. Grandpa had told her that morning that she needed to learn to accept what had happened as a part of her past. Until she did, she wouldn't be able to move beyond it. Perhaps if she heard about it from a friendly third party…

"He said," Kevin started, then shook his head. "You know, I really don't want to make you upset again. I don't think…"

"I really need to know what you know," she insisted softly. Her blue eyes caught and pinned his. "Tell me, please?"

"He said a man had touched you without your permission – touched you in a sexual way," Kevin told her finally in a voice that was hesitant and soft in fear of her reaction. "He said this man hurt you."

Deb blinked. The words that Kevin had used had described her experience perfectly, but without any sense of condemnation or assignation of shame or guilt. There was a balm to be found in the fact that Kevin wasn't finding the sexual aspect of her experience anything to snicker at or use to make her feel uncomfortable.

"I need to know…" she said then after a long moment.

"What?"

"What do you see when you look at me?"

Kevin stared. He didn't see anything different… "What do you mean?"

Deb looked back down at her hands and struggled to find a way to explain her feelings that she was covered from head to foot with signs of her attacker's presence. "Tell me, what do you see? Can you tell…"

"I see you like I always do," he answered honestly and with some confusion. "What else am I supposed to see?"

"Where he touched me," she said in a horrified whisper.

She felt Kevin's eyes rake over her from one end to the other for a long and excruciating moment. "But I don't know where he touched you," he confessed at last, "so I don't know where to look."

She looked up at him again. Grandpa had had her lock herself in the bathroom and stand in front of a mirror naked two days ago, looking at her body – convinced that if she stood and looked long enough, she would discover for herself that there was no visible sign proclaiming her damaged goods. But she had stood in front of the mirror and cried instead – because she COULD see every place where those rude and groping hands had pressed or pushed or prodded or pinched or penetrated. Part of her biggest lie – her deliberate effort to push Grandpa away from the most painful places of her experience – had been to pretend that she'd discovered her supposed mistake and been relieved.

But here was Kevin – sweet, honest Kevin – telling her he really DIDN'T see anything at all. HAD she been imagining everything she'd seen that day? "You don't see anything?"

With wide eyes, he shook his head at her. "You look the same as you always have – except maybe that you're sadder now."

"You're not just saying that…"

"Deb, if I saw something, I'd tell you," he assured her quickly. "Why should I lie?"

For the life of her, she couldn't answer that heartfelt question – anymore than she could answer the question of why her grandfather would have lied to her about the same thing either. "The only mark Grandpa said I should be able to see would be where he bit me…" she mused to herself, unaware she'd spoken aloud.

"He BIT you?" Kevin was outraged. "Where?" he demanded to know.

Deb blushed deeply in embarrassment and then lightly touched her right breast with hesitant fingers. "Here," she said, unable to look at him anymore

His brow furled in worry. "Does it still hurt?"

"Yes," she answered very softly.

"I'm sorry," he said suddenly.

"For what?"

"For not being able to protect you," he said sadly, "from scaring you so badly when you came home… All I wanted to do was give you a hug to tell you how glad I was that you were back and safe…"

Deb looked up at him again. "Kevin?"

"What?"

"That hug?"

"Yeah?" he nodded, knowing what she was talking about.

"Do you think I could have it now?"

He stared at her for a little bit and then the swallowed hard and nodded. Deb slowly scooted herself along the length of the couch until she was sitting right next to Kevin, within easy reach. Hesitantly, not sure if he was doing the right thing, he lifted his arm and waited. After another long moment, she scooted over just a little bit more and leaned very carefully against him.

She felt the arm under which she had slipped slowly settle across her back, not restraining her in the least. She carefully slid a hand across his middle and tucked it into his opposite side and leaned a little more. Kevin's other arm came up immediately and completed the embrace – still loosely enough that she could know that he would release her the moment she asked him to.

This is Kevin, she reminded herself quietly. He would never hurt me. Repeating those statements over and over like mantras, she forced herself to relax a little. After another long moment, she closed her eyes and relaxed a little more, laying her head against his chest.

Kevin settled back into a more comfortable position against the cushions of the couch, holding her very tenderly and very carefully in his arms. He didn't know if what he was doing would help any, but she had asked – and that was good enough for him.

He didn't understand Deb right now any better than he'd understood Crystal earlier. All he did understand was that he could sit on the couch forever with his arms around Deb, if that's what she needed or asked of him.

"Hello?"

"Doctor Mitchell? This is Colonel Stiller."

The water glass in Mitchell's hand fell away from senseless fingers and shattered on the kitchen floor. Suddenly the voice behind the hoarseness that had whispered so malevolently into her ear that morning was very clear, and she knew exactly who had attacked her and scared her half to death. "What the hell do you want?" she demanded in a shaky voice.

"I was wondering if you've had a chance to reconsider your decisions since our last visit," he asked her smugly.

"You son of a bitch," she hissed at him, wishing there was some way to catch the attention of one of the sweepers Harrison had assured her would be just outside her door. But then, Harrison had told her they were going to put a tap on the line again — so that meant that anything she could coax out of him would be caught on tape, just like last time. "You could have killed me."

"Tsk, tsk, Doctor," Stiller gloated slightly. He'd been proud of his handiwork — a chemist would have no idea the precision needed to only cut through the one layer of skin without damaging the tissue beneath. "I have no idea what you're talking about. You'll just have to wear a scarf for a while. And as for the reason for my call — HAVE you reconsidered your decision regarding Veracity?"

"Absolutely not!" Mitchell shook her head, at first slowly and then with more vehemence. "I wouldn't work for you now if you paid me a million dollars a day."

"Bad choice, Doctor," Stiller growled, cursing the stubbornness of this Centre employee. "You see, I know where you live, I know where you work, I know where you shop, I know who your friends are, I know your routine. I can get to you whenever and wherever I damned well please. Daytime, nighttime, it's all the same to me." He paused and then dropped his voice just a little bit more. "You're a pretty lady, Doctor. I will enjoy our next meeting immensely."

"More threats?" she was angry enough now not to be afraid any longer. "You're a coward, Stiller, a coward and a smudge of pond scum. You think that you can sneak up behind people and threaten them with knives because they refuse to do what you want them to, and suddenly they'll roll over and play lapdog to your every command? Well, Buster, listen to my final answer to you!" And she slammed the receiver down onto the base with a shriek of anger and dismay.

Suddenly she heard the sound of footsteps running down the stairs outside the apartment door, and then a frantic knock. "Are you all right?" came an unfamiliar and accented voice from outside.

She peeked through the little spy hole in the door to no avail. Whoever it was, was not within the range of the little device. "Who's there?"

"I am Ping Xing-Li — I live in the apartment right above you. I heard you cry out…"

Mitchell breathed a sigh of relief and quickly removed the security chain and let off the flip latch and unlocked the deadbolt. She opened the door up slightly to find that her neighbor was a petite Chinese woman who barely came up to her shoulder. "Wha… what can I do for you?"

"Are you all right?" the tiny woman asked again, obviously very concerned. "Do you need help?"

Mitchell peered around into the darkness past the reach of the outdoor light. "I…" She fought the feeling of abandonment and fear, then knew that she wasn't going to be able to deal with it alone — not THAT night, at least. "Do you think I could come up to your apartment for a little bit," she asked with a slight blush of embarrassment. "Somebody's harassing me by telephone, and…"

"You don't want to be alone?" Xing-Li asked knowingly. The terror on the American woman's face was palpable. And then she saw the thin line of red at her throat. "Did he do that to you?" she asked softly, pointing.

"This morning." Mitchell tried again to rally her nerves to the point that she could stop shaking inside, but again failed. "Please…"

"Sure," Xing-Li nodded finally. With Mei-Chiang gone and no clue when or even if she was going to come home tonight, she could use the company. "Come on upstairs. I'll make you some tea."

Mitchell grabbed up the key chain with the key to her little so-called haven and stuffed it in her jeans pocket and then carefully locked her door behind herself. She followed the Chinese woman up the stairs and, taking a deep breath, walked into another apartment completely — and virtually into another world. The furnishings of this apartment were nearly identical to those of the apartment she'd just settled into, but the place had a more lived-in feel to it.

"Please sit," Xing-Li gestured to a chair at her kitchen table and immediately began to draw water to get the tea on.

Feeling just a little less vulnerable and abandoned for the first time since her attack, Mitchell sank into the chair and put her face in her hands.

Mei-Chiang roused and then settled back against the pillow. Sam's arm around her waist tightened ever so slightly at her movement and pulled her in closer to him so that his breath moved her hair at her shoulder. Her giant economy sized bear was asleep, and yet sleep eluded her — the curse of the single serving sized, she told herself with a wry smile, or maybe just the curse of being practical and Chinese. She turned so that she could look at his face in the dim light of the street lamp just outside the bedroom window. This was her future husband, and she still had trouble saying the word to herself. Wife — she'd long since given up ever thinking of that word in connection with herself.

It was hard to wrap her mind around the rapid way her life had shifted over the course of a single day. She had started the day a mere secretary wanting to buy a car for herself for the first time in her life and coming to visit a new friend for spaghetti dinner. Now here she was, a nearly married woman, and nearly married to a powerful man in a powerful organization who had shoved aside all of her practical arguments against such an alliance in order to woo her. Her body ached in the most wonderful and intimate of ways from their lovemaking both before and after dinner when he had made her completely his. Even now, just the memory of his touch — the very thought of him touching her again — made her entire body tingle with delicious anticipation despite the ache.

What would Miss Parker say on Monday morning when she would ask for permission to leave an hour or so work early so that Sam could take her to the courthouse in Dover to apply for a marriage license — and then to a doctor to get the required blood tests? It was one thing to quietly allow fraternization between employees — would she lose her job by agreeing to become Sam's wife? The future seemed so impenetrable now, after several years of being comfortably predictable although precarious.

What would Xing-Li say? Her Younger Sister would be left alone in that little apartment now. She had no doubt that Sam would want her here, in his house and in his bed, from now on — and she honestly didn't mind that in the least. This was an extremely comfortable home — one in which she could see herself finding safety and raising their children. Perhaps Xing-Li would finally be able to find someone too now, now that she was no longer shackled to the Centre? That thought cheered her. Perhaps she could talk to Sam or even Mr. Tyler about that. She smirked at herself in the darkness. Here she was, only a single night away from her chaste life, and already she was playing matchmaker to her Younger Sister. How very Chinese of her! Well, why not, she asked herself brazenly. If she could find happiness here in America, so could Xing-Li!

She raised her hand and brushed the backs of her fingertips along the line of his jaw, now bristled and in need of a shave. Yes, she had found happiness in America in a giant economy sized bear of a man named Sam Atlee. He was a gentle and loving man — and she now had no excuse not to allow herself the luxury of falling completely in love with him. What was she talking about — if she was honest with herself, she'd realize that she had started falling in love with him the first time she'd noticed that he was watching her closely, a very long time ago. Their time alone together over the past few days had only clinched what she'd been helpless to prevent otherwise. She wasn't falling in love with him anymore, she was very much IN love with him. Her eyes filled with tears all of a sudden as she prayed fervently to every last god she knew of to let her enjoy happiness at last. Husband... She tried the word silently on her lips for the first time. MY husband… It would take some getting used to.

Sam roused when he felt the woman at his side give a hitch in her breathing. He opened his eyes sleepily, and then opened them wider when he saw the glimmer of tear tracks down her cheeks. "What is it?" he whispered, reaching up his hand from his waist and wiping the moistness away tenderly. "My God, did I hurt you after all?"

"No, no," she whispered back, his concern making her hiccough with another sob. "I'm happy."

"This doesn't look much like happiness to me," he roused further and pulled her closer into his arms so that she rested her head on his chest. "What's wrong? Talk to me."

"Nothing," she insisted, running her hand through the soft fur on his chest and then holding him tightly. "I'm just afraid this is a dream — that I'll wake up and find it all was nothing more than my own wishful thinking."

His lips found her forehead. "I feel the same way," he admitted softly. "I've been alone too long, dreamed too many dreams that ended up being nothing but illusions when the morning came. I'm afraid I'll wake up in the morning and find you gone too — that you were never here."

"Do you know how wrong this is, how contrary this is to everything I've ever known or believed?" she finally asked him, growing brave in his unexpected admission of vulnerability while loving him all the more for it. "Practical Chinese wisdom is that a man of your status would make me a mistress, not a wife — you would marry later to bring yourself status, children. I would be content as a mistress, knowing that we would enjoy pleasure together often without commitment. I might even remain your mistress after your marriage, if we were to become very fond of each other. I was trained to this — be a mistress, a concubine — where my sole duty would be to make love with a man and help ease the burden of his day." She smoothed her hand across the broad expanse of his chest again. "I'm so afraid that I will fail you, that I won't know how to be a proper wife…"

"This isn't wrong, Mei," he contradicted gently after listening carefully to what she said and being amazed at the differences their cultures had instilled in them. "There is no way in the world that you could possibly fail me. I love you, and I know you love me too. Nothing else matters." He brushed his lips across her forehead again. "If anything, I'm the one who should worry about failing you — that I'll hurt you somehow by being careless. You're so small…" His fingertips traced the outline of her lips. "So beautiful…"

"I do love you, more than you'll ever know," Mei-Chiang said very softly, finally speaking the words that described the emotion that was filling her whole being. "I know it isn't practical, but…"

"Practical, schmactical. I told you, I don't care," he smiled at her, shifting and rolling gently so that they were finally face to face, side by side, each holding the other. He stretched forward across the little distance between them and captured her lips with his in a soft and tender kiss. "This is all that truly matters." Then he pulled her into him again and rolled, nestling her head onto his shoulder and tugging the sheet up to cover them more comfortably again. "Sleep now. I have to get up early tomorrow after all, remember?"

She nodded, remembering his listening to the answering machine with Tyler's message as she had finished cleaning up the leftovers and getting the dishwasher started, and settled down under his protective arm. "Don't let go…" she said suddenly.

Sam raised his head in surprise at the odd request, and then kissed her forehead as he settled back into his pillow and tightened his hold on her. "Don't worry — wild tigers couldn't take you away from me now."

Feedback, please:


	10. Feeling Things Out

Resolutions – 10

Feeling Things Out

by MMB

"Now that we're all here," Senator Burns tapped on his water glass to get the attention of everyone around the table, "maybe we can start. Phil, since everything we do depends on adequate funding — unlike everything else in this town…" There was a general rumble of jaded chuckles.

"Everything on my end is still one hundred percent green light. All I need is a name to put on a check." The mousy little accountant from the National Security Agency stared at the Senator from Florida. "I keep waiting to hear that I can start cutting checks to the Centre again."

Burns shook his head. "We won't BE cutting checks to the Centre anymore, Phil — I already told you that. My meeting with the new Chairman didn't go well at all, and meetings between some of my associates and other members of the Centre administration have been equally unsatisfactory." He toyed with the spoon in his coffee, watching the swirl of creamer gradually color the entire container. "I understand General Curtis has been working on getting around the Centre power structure and dealing with the people involved directly." He looked over at the steely military man. "Any luck?"

"Not yet," the gravelly voice announced unhappily, and there was a rumble of dismay from around the table. "Our one success so far has been to liberate the documentation of all our efforts from the hands of the Pentagon and get it safely shipped to Norfolk."

"We can't afford to be sitting around with our thumbs up our butts, people," the Senator from Montana looked from face to face sharply. "We have a schedule set up that would mean our being able to take affirmative action in several key trouble spots around the world. We don't have the luxury of…"

"We don't have the Centre behind us anymore," Burns growled out his answer. "And face it, efforts to put everything that the Centre had been doing for us back into operation is NOT going to happen overnight. We have to proceed carefully, and not trip over any wires that activate an investigation. We're all in this up to our necks, you know."

"I'm going to suggest that we revisit the suggestion to open an investigation into Centre operations in general," Tom Jackson, Senator from Vermont, piped up from his end of the table. "The point was made at our last meeting that we know enough about them already to get the FBI nicely interested…"

"The problem with that," Canfield countered, "is that the Centre just went through a major reorganization. Many of the principles against whom charges could have been brought have either vanished or died — remember that there WAS an explosion at the Delaware headquarters just a couple of weeks ago."

"There has to be SOMEthing…" Burns insisted.

"I see no alternative but to investigate the current administration," Phillip Baldwin spoke softly but caught everyone's attention. "I don't know of anybody in a position of authority that doesn't have at least ONE skeleton in their closet…"

"That's what I was thinking when I spoke to George the other day," Burns nodded enthusiastic agreement. "The Centre's financial and research dealings with notorious underworld figures has been common knowledge in the law enforcement field for years. Hell, the Centre has been paying hush money to at least three in the FBI that I know of —and there's at least one agent there who'd give his life to bring the Centre to pay for things they've done. Bring that all out and throw the possibility of public exposure and hearings in the face of that bitch of a Chairman — and watch her climb back on board our little train of thought so fast…"

"I told you," Canfield warned, "that making such a blatant move could blow up in our faces. That bitch of a Chairman over there is nobody's fool — she was promoted from the ranks, which means she survived over there when several we know of simply vanished. I also want to bring to your attention that if we start hauling in other federal agencies to do the footwork for us, we run the risk of them tripping over one of our long-forgotten coattails. We don't need to shoot ourselves in the foot here."

"I agree that we need to not overplay our hand with the Centre." Jackson sipped at his coffee after hearing the arguments pro and con. "The lady in charge is smart — if she's been ditching our projects, nine chances out of ten she's been nuking her connections to the underworld too. If we start something without ample justification, we could call attention to ourselves — and we DON'T want to do that."

"You know," Phil Baldwin mused aloud, "if she's only been in charge a few weeks, there's a good chance that there are several less than savory policies of the previous Centre administration that she may not have dealt with yet. Between the bombing and, I understand, a kidnapping, she's been playing a game of emergency damage control."

"True," Burns was starting to smile. "I wonder if she's caught on to the way her brother used to go about hiring his clerical help?" He gazed around the table, and noted that each of the men seated there had a suitably disgusted look on their face. "Yeah, I know — the man was a slime and deserved the electric chair several times over, and he used to be our best friend at getting our projects pushed through committee there and into development. But if any of those girls are still alive, and are still working there… Couldn't we start things up over fair employment and immigration law?"

"A couple of words about Chinese Intelligence infiltration into high security research facilities and the potential National Security issues into the right ears in my office should do the trick," Baldwin offered.

"Isn't that exploiting those women all over again?" Canfield asked unhappily. "You know, we're trying to defend our country, not make this into a case of tit for tat on the backs of relative innocents."

"We're using the resources available to us, George," Jackson told his colleague firmly. "We need the Centre with us — and we really don't have a lot of choices about how we go about getting such a thing back."

"I'd like a chance to let my people get the scientists back to work WITHOUT having to go to that extreme," Curtis complained. "I'd like a little more time on that. We start investigations all over the place, and my people won't be able to get close to the Centre people anymore."

"All right," Burns tapped on his water glass again. "All those in favor of Phil's suggestion of starting investigations and seeing if that won't convince the Centre to stop being so damned obstinate…" He raised his own hand and counted Baldwin as joining him. "All those in favor of giving Doug another week to get his ducks in a row before trying something else…" Canfield's hand went up immediately, as did Curtis'. Burns swung his head over to look at his colleague from Vermont. "Tom?"

"How about both?" was the answer. The others around the table looked at each other. "I mean it," Jackson continued. "We can quietly check out to see if any of Lyle's cuties from the Orient are still on the Centre tax rolls while waiting for Doug's flunkies to do their stuff. That way, IF Doug's idea works, we won't have caused undue attention — but if his idea flops, we've already done some of the leg work that will jump-start the investigation."

"I like that," Baldwin nodded after thinking about it for a while. "It covers both bases rather nicely."

Burns looked around the table. "Are we agreed, then — we give Doug another week, and Phil sees whether we have anything to work with left over from Lyle's nasty little habit?" The heads around the table all nodded with various degrees of enthusiasm. "Then I'd say our meeting is finished."

"Good," Curtis growled with a smile. "I'm hungry. Whose turn is it to buy breakfast this week, again?"

"Yours." Jackson, Baldwin and Canfield replied in unison, then the whole table broke into boisterous laughter that banished the serious mood of the meeting just concluded.

Miss Parker opened the door and then paused without standing aside to let her Chief of Security into her home. Sam's brows raised as he looked down into his boss' face and found a sparkling and humorous grey gaze measuring him up expertly. "Is there something wrong, Miss Parker?" he asked deferentially.

"You tell me," she retorted, glad that none of the others had arrived yet so that she could grill him without embarrassing him in front of others. She had hardly recognized him when she'd opened the door — his face had a soft and contented look to it that was quite different from the pure business look she was used to associating with the ex-sweeper. It certainly was a far cry from the whipped puppy look that had characterized his countenance while searching for Davy and Deb. "You look like the cat that ate the canary."

He looked away with a slight smile and… Miss Parker gaped… even a hint of red flushing his face. "OK, that's it!" She gripped his arm firmly and pulled him into the house and closed the door behind him, "Spill it, Sam, and don't leave out anything." She planted herself directly in front of him and looked up at him expectantly, waiting.

Sam looked down at his boss — his friend. She'd been very clear in California that she considered him a part of her unconventional family. But still, she WAS his boss. "I…" He took a deep breath. "I'm getting married," he announced bluntly.

Miss Parker stared, and then the grin began to spread across her face. "Mei-Chiang," she stated with a sudden, sure knowledge, only to see him bob his head awkwardly in a nod, the red on his face just a little more visible. "It's a little sudden, isn't it?"

"No, ma'am." He looked into her eyes suddenly, and she was mesmerized by the look of absolute certainty in those blue depths. "It just might seem that way to everybody else."

"Well, congratulations," she said gently, patting his arm in a congratulatory gesture, and then stood back as if thoroughly dissatisfied. "Oh hell!" she burst out suddenly and threw her arms around his neck and gave him a quick and completely unexpected hug. "I'm so happy for you both."

Touched beyond belief, Sam hugged her back very briefly. "Thank you, ma'am," he breathed in relief and surprise.

"You WILL invite Davy and me to the wedding, won't you?" she demanded imperiously then, leading the way into the kitchen and the coffeepot. "When is this all going to take place?"

"As soon as possible," he told her, taking the mug she held out to him. "We'll be going for the license and blood tests Monday afternoon…"

"As I suspected," she nodded knowingly. "And then…"

"As soon as we can after that." He smiled shyly at her. "And I wouldn't dream of getting married without having you there as a witness, Miss Parker."

"That is GOOD news, Sam," Miss Parker beamed at him and watched him relax into that quiet contentedness she'd seen at the door, knowing that the only reason she was seeing it was that it was still just the two of them. That he would finally relax and share his happiness with her in such a personal way was the first overt sign that he was accepting the fact that he really did belong to the 'family' after all — and that, in and of itself, was enough to brighten her day. "That's actually some of the best I've heard in a long time." She lifted her head as the sound of another car crunched up her driveway. "Have a seat, looks like the others are here."

"Yes, ma'am," Sam carried his mug to the kitchen table and took a seat. He'd have to tell Mei that her biggest fear — Miss Parker's disapproval — was groundless. He smiled. He'd do that when he picked her up again at the apartment building later.

Soon he heard the chatter of Tyler and Harrison's voices with Miss Parker's. The three came into the kitchen and Miss Parker put down the trio of empty mugs on the table and filled them all at once. "OK, boys — what went on yesterday while Sam and I took a day off?"

Tyler quickly summarized the day's events. Miss Parker swore softly when she heard of the disappearance of the hard-copy documentation from the Pentagon archives. And then Harrison piped up to report that Doctor Mitchell had received another phone call from Stiller, it seemed — a most definitely threatening one. She had called the Security office late that night from the apartment upstairs afterwards, too afraid to be alone anymore.

"Call Colonel Fox and see what he can do to rein in the bastard," Sam grumbled.

"I fully intend to when I'm through here," Tyler replied. "But I'm fairly sure that Fox has his own tap on Stiller's line now. I'm betting he knows about this already — all WE have to do is sit tight and wait for him to move."

"What about this other project we know about — Black Hole?" Miss Parker demanded. "Do we know who was involved with it on our end, and have we spoken to that person?"

"Dr. Henry Zeigler was administering the project on our end," Tyler informed her. "Since Black Hole involved both pharmaceutical and psychological research, Psychogenics was put in charge."

Miss Parker looked down into her coffee in sudden consternation. Did Sydney know anything about this project as the head of Psychogenics? She'd have to call him after the meeting and find out. She looked up again. "So… Have you talked to Zeigler?"

Tyler shook his head. "He's at a conference in Berlin and won't be back until Tuesday."

"Meet him at the airport with a full security team," she ordered Sam in a quiet voice. "I don't want Stiller or anybody like him to even get a chance at him."

"Yes, ma'am." Sam scribbled in the notebook he carried with him at all times. "I'll call our satellite office in Berlin and get some extra security for him while he's there too."

"Good thinking." She looked over at Tyler. "How's Mitchell this morning?"

Tyler shook his head and deferred response to Harrison. "Well?" Miss Parker asked again.

"I had an extra security team assigned to monitor the apartment already — and I ordered one of those men to take up position inside the apartment with her, to give her a greater feeling of security." He shrugged. "I haven't heard back from him yet this morning, but I didn't hear from him again last night — and nothing from the outside surveillance reported anything amiss."

"Stiller probably doesn't even know yet that she isn't at home anymore," Tyler offered. "Her phone calls are all being forwarded automatically to the apartment."

"Any sign of activity in the unused labs at the Centre itself yet?"

Harrison and Sam looked at each other and then both shook their heads. "Nope," Sam replied. "And we had the cameras back up and the monitors installed and running right away. If there's anything going on, it isn't happening in that part of the Centre."

"I want a complete sweep of all active labs during business hours tomorrow," Miss Parker aimed at Sam again. "I want documentation checked and the security teams given a list of banned project names. If there's even the slightest mention…"

"Done." Sam scribbled again.

"What do we do now?" Harrison asked. "It doesn't seem like we're doing much of anything," he shot a cautious look at his boss and direct superior, "with all due respect, ma'am…"

"We sit tight, gentlemen, and we wait." Miss Parker picked up her coffee and took a long sip. "And if Fox doesn't haul Stiller in pretty soon, we take our evidence of his complicity in Mitchell's attack to the Dover DA."

"That's it?"

"That's it," she replied dourly. "We're legit now — we obey the law. We don't engage in our own arm-twisting anymore of anybody but our own, as much as we'd want to. We sit, and we wait for the proper authorities to finally get off their asses and earn our hard-earned tax dollars." She looked around the table. "Welcome to the new day at the Centre, boys."

"Yippee," was Tyler's sarcastic retort. "I wasn't even a part of the 'old' Centre and I miss it already."

"That makes two of us," Sam grumbled, carefully avoiding looking at his boss.

"Three of us." Harrison put his coffee mug down with a thump.

"Four." All three men turned and stared at Miss Parker, at which point she shrugged. "After everything that's gone on lately, do you blame me?"

They all shook their heads and busied themselves with their coffee.

Deb put the newly refilled cup of coffee on the table next to her grandfather. "Here you are, Grandpa," she said softly.

Sydney studied her face carefully. "You're looking a little more rested today, ma petite."

"So do you," she replied and then sat down into the narrow place next to him on his daybed. "You needed your sleep yesterday." She studied her hands. "I'm sorry I was such a mess…"

"Hush," he patted her hands gently. "There's nothing to apologize for."

"Yeah, there is." Deb took a deep breath and then looked at him in the eye. "I lied to you."

"Oh?" Sydney let his hand rest on hers and merely raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"When you asked me to go in there and look at myself," she confessed, nodding at the open bathroom door with her nose. "You told me the only thing I'd see was where he bit me."

"You saw more than that?" Sydney was curious now — what had brought this about?

"I thought I did," Deb said defensively, and looked down. "But I came out and told you that you were right."

"You THOUGHT you did?" The psychiatrist's ears picked up on the nuances in her words. "Have you had a chance to rethink things, then?"

She nodded. "I talked to Kevin yesterday…"

"I know," Sydney smiled at her. "I had to wake you both up for supper last night, remember?"

"Oh yeah." A smile slipped past the guilt. She hadn't meant to fall asleep in Kevin's arms, but she had — and evidently he had fallen asleep waiting patiently for her to wake up again. "Anyway, I asked him if HE could see…"

He nodded, understanding at last. "And he told you he couldn't see anything."

She nodded, then looked up, her blue eyes swimming. "I'm sorry I lied, Grandpa."

He gazed at her with gentle sympathy. "I'm sorry you did too, ma petite. You see, the person you've most injured with this was YOU, not me."

"I still see everything, though," she whimpered. "Why can I see it, and you guys can't?"

"Why don't you tell me why YOU think that's so?"

Deb's gaze slipped away from his again and back down to her hands, warm beneath his. "Because I can't let go?"

"Verrrry good," he soothed softly. "And why do you think you can't let go?"

"Because I'm afraid?"

"Afraid of what, Debbie?"

"Afraid it's my fault," she whimpered.

"We've talked about this before, haven't we?" Sydney asked gently, and she nodded glumly. "Tell me again why it's your fault?"

"I don't know…" she whimpered again, this time the tears beginning to fall. "I just feel like it's my fault."

"What do you feel is your fault?" Sydney decided to tackle the problem from another angle.

"That he… that he…"

"You mean to tell me that you did something that made that man want to touch you like that?" Sydney carefully kept the shock and dismay from his voice. He had to be a therapist now, not a grandfather. She nodded her head again, not able to look at him. "What did you do that made him want to touch you?"

"I tried to scream — I made him angry," she told him in a shaky voice. "I tried to fight."

"So you're saying you didn't have the right to scream or try to fight?"

"It was stupid," she charged herself brutally. "I was tied up — thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes…"

"And you think that your trying to scream or fight made him want to touch you the way he did?"

"I don't know why else he would have done it," she said in defeated confusion.

"Have you considered that he would have done this to you regardless of whether you had screamed or fought?"

The blue eyes came up to meet his in surprise. "Why?"

Sydney felt sick to his stomach to have to explain the mind of a potential rapist to her, but she needed to face the honest truth about the situation with no punches pulled. "Because some men get a great deal of sexual stimulation out of the sense of power that comes with the act of assaulting a woman or a child. Assault and rape are all about power and control, things that can be very sexually stimulating to some very psychologically disturbed men — and the more power and control they have over their victim, the more turned-on they get. So think about it. You were tied up, your mouth covered with duct tape — and even if you tried to scream or squirm, there would be no way that you could effectively say 'no' to him." He could see the horror his words were brewing. "You could have lain very still and not made a sound, OR you could have fought with all your might and screamed your head off as best you could, and he STILL would have touched you, molested you — maybe even raped you had the other man not stopped him. And he would have, simply because he could and because he wanted to."

"Really?" Her voice was very small.

"Parker told me that this man was arrested in Los Angeles later for having raped and killed another woman, Deb. A prostitute — a woman who made her business letting men have sex with her for money."

Deb swallowed hard. "I know, she told me this too." And the very thought was enough to make her want to throw herself into her grandfather's arms again and hide.

"Do you really think a man capable of doing such a thing — and evidently not for the first time — would have any problems with the idea of molesting or raping a beautiful girl like you while you're all tied up and unable to fight him off?"

"No…"

"So, now tell me again. Is it your fault?"

He could see in her eyes that she was finally processing the information properly. "He wanted to touch me that way simply because he could and I couldn't say no? Nothing I would have done would have changed his mind?"

"What do you think?" Slowly, very slowly, she shook her head after thinking hard for a long time. "Are you sure?" he insisted. "You aren't just telling me this because you think that's what I want to hear…"

"No," she said in a shaky, breathless voice. "I'm just having trouble believing that some…" Her blue eyes came up to his again. "He could have been thinking about it all the time we were on the plane, in the car…"

"That's right," he nodded and then waited to see what other implications would start coming clear.

"Nothing…" Her mind was a-whirl and she looked around the den, not seeing it at all for the moment. Her mind replayed those horrible moments in that hot and filthy house in California, and it was like seeing the entire episode from a completely different perspective. She had been the first one lifted from the trunk of the car — and her attacker had been quite insistent at being the one to carry HER inside. His hands had started their unwelcome travelling almost the moment he'd laid hands on her — before she'd even tried to fight back. "It wasn't my fault." For the first time, she said it and almost believed it.

"Is that the truth then?" Sydney asked quietly. He could tell she was so close to the break-through…

She looked back at him again, and the blue was clear, and the tears were gone. "It wasn't my fault," she said again, a little more convinced. "Nothing I did…"

"So do you have anything to be afraid of?" he asked next, pursuing her own line of reasoning backwards to the beginning of their discussion.

Deb shook her head slowly. "It wasn't my fault," she repeated. It was true. It WASN'T her fault.

Sydney finally allowed himself to lift a hand to her cheek. "I think you owe it to yourself to go back into that bathroom and look again, now," he said quietly. "Don't you?"

She looked over her shoulder at the bathroom and then back at her grandfather's warm chestnut gaze. "Maybe I won't see it this time?" she asked hopefully in a small voice.

"Why don't you go check it out, and then come back out and tell me the truth this time, OK?" He smiled at her. "If you still see everything you thought you saw before, then we'll talk some more, because then we'll both know that something else is making you hang on and not let go. But don't be afraid to look and see that there's nothing there — only that one small bandage."

Deb stood and walked over to the bathroom door with much more determination this time. Sydney listened to the door click shut and then the rattle of the knob that told of the door being locked from the inside, and reached for his coffee cup with a sigh. He took a long sip of the cooling liquid and then put the cup down to wipe the tears from his cheek that had been forced to wait until he was alone to be shed.

Dear God, he had to get through to her somehow, sometime!

Jarod put the bowl of cereal down in front of Ginger and then went to the front door. "I was thinking that you'd be here sooner or later," he commented as his half-brother walked past him. "Mom did have to make my MY place the staging area this year…"

"Mom's got the hotdogs, and Em was fixing salads all day yesterday. Did you do your shopping?" Ethan asked, raising his own load of grocery bags straining with the plastic bottles of soda and water.

"I have chips and cookies of all sorts," Jarod crowed, leading the way toward the kitchen. "And I have a surprise for you."

"Not before I get a cup of coffee, I hope," Ethan grinned, and then grinned wider when he saw Ginger at the kitchen table shoveling in her breakfast, still in her pajamas. "Ah! A wood-sprite in her nightie is sitting at your table, Jarod,"

Jarod grinned and merely asked. "Who is this, Sprite?"

Ginger smiled at the newcomer and swallowed the half-chewed wad in her mouth. "Ee-fan," she said carefully. "Righ, Daddy?"

Ethan's steps died in his tracks and his mouth dropped wide open. "Did she?" He stared first at the little girl, who had gone back to eating after getting her confirming nod from her foster father, and then at his smirking brother. "She's talking?"

"Like a magpie," Jarod crowed again, this time with a warm tone of fondness and pride. "She's still a little rough on the pronunciation, but that's getting better almost by the moment — and she has an astounding vocabulary. I think she's been soaking up everything she's ever heard anybody say to her all this time, and now she's ready to let it come out." He ducked through the garage door briefly to haul in the ice chest.

"Wha dat, Ee-fan?" she chirped, as if to prove Jarod's point.

"Sodas," he answered in surprise. "All kinds of sodas and drinks. What kind do you like?"

The dark eyes sparkled. "Semmup," she answered immediately.

"Eat up, Sprite," Jarod urged gently. "The picnic's not going to be until after one — so you don't want to start the day hungry."

"This is amazing!" Ethan gaped as he shook his head and then began to unpack his bags into the ice chest. "I just saw her… how long ago?"

"The day Parker left," Jarod told him, fetching the bags of crushed ice from the freezer. "This just started a little over a day ago…"

"Has Mom heard her?"

Jarod smirked. "It was Mom that got her started. Something as simple as buying her a pair of butterflies for her hair."

"Gamma," Ginger nodded in agreement. "Buffa-fies."

"I'll be damned," Ethan said, shaking his head again.

"Bee dam…" Ginger repeated.

Jarod shot his brother a warning glare. "We don't have to repeat EVERYTHING we hear, Sprite," he told his daughter seriously. "OK?"

"'Kay," she agreed readily and picked up her bowl to drink the milk that was left at the bottom. "Go pi-nik now?"

"Not yet," he shook his head. "YOU need to go get dressed first."

"Sim-soo?"

"A tee shirt and the pants that your Grandma fixed the other day," he told her firmly. "We'll get out the swim suit later if it's hot, though. I promise."

"'Kay," she agreed again and trotted off to her bedroom to put on some clothes — specifically the jeans her Grandma had lengthened and then decorated with a ring of embroidered flowers at the hem and a tee shirt.

"I talked to Charles yesterday after you left the office," Ethan mentioned the new psychiatrist who would be starting orientation next week as Jarod's replacement as he watching Jarod carefully pour the crushed ice between the bottles in the chest. "His family is flying in today to join him after all, and he'll be ready to begin sitting in with you bright and early on Monday."

"I'm glad that worked out," Jarod breathed a sigh of relief. "At least when I leave this time, you won't end up snowed under." There was another knock at the door. "How much you want bet that's Jay?"

"No takers," Ethan chuckled. Their younger brother also tended to be the most fun loving of the three — and for the last two years, this picnic was his annual back-to-school celebration. He left Jarod still pouring ice and answered the door. "We figured it was you."

"It's no fun when I can't even surprise people anymore," Jay grumbled with a smirk and held up his set of bags. "Two loaves of garlic bread, ready for the grill."

Ginger trotted back out of her bedroom, hairbrush and butterfly barrettes in hand, and skidded to a halt at the sight of the man who just looked too much like her Daddy. She threw Jay a confused look and then turned and trotted for the kitchen. "Daddy!"

"Wait a minute," Jay looked at his smiling brother in surprise. "This is our quiet little Mouse?" Em's alternate nickname for her new niece had seemed very apropos at the time.

"Jarod says she's more magpie than mouse nowadays," Ethan chuckled at the look on Jay's face. "But I see you still confuse her."

Jarod appeared from the kitchen carrying his little girl. "OK, we're going to get this straight," he was telling her gently as he carried her close to the other men. "Who is this?" he asked her, pointing at Ethan.

"Ee-fan," she answered immediately.

"And this?" He pointed at Jay.

"What's my name, Mouse?" Jay asked her too.

Ginger frowned. This was what she didn't understand. The voice was the same. The hands were the same. Even some of the expressions on the face were the same. She looked back and forth between the two. Daddy had hair on his face, some of it grey, and he wore glasses — but those were the only difference between the two. "Doh-no," she said finally. "Sorry Daddy."

"That's your Uncle Jay. Say Jay, Sprite."

"Chay?"

"That's right," Jay said gently, smiling at his niece. "Jay."

There was yet another knock on the door, and Margaret let Sammy trot into the house ahead of her. "Gamma!" Ginger twisted in her father's arms. "Buffa-fies, pees?"

"What? Your Daddy doesn't have your butterflies in your hair yet? My goodness!" Margaret scolded her oldest son with a wide smile that told the little girl she was joking. "You bring your hairbrush to me, then. I'll take care of it…"

"Where we going this year, Unka Jarod?" Sammy was tugging on his uncle's arm.

"I thought we'd hit the beach this year," Jarod said with a nod toward his picture window. "Plenty of room down below for a bonfire and barbecue." He put his daughter back down on the floor and watched her run to her grandmother to get her hair brushed.

"Yeah!" Sammy cheered.

Jarod moved to the front door and helped Nathan carry in the load of sacks from the car and then gave his sister a kiss on the cheek. "Welcome to this year's Russell Family Fall Picnic."

"Hello, Senator Ashland," Fox said, opening his front door to the esteemed Senator from California. "I take it you had no trouble finding the place?"

"None at all, Colonel. Your directions were superb." Becca Ashland was still a fine looking woman despite her age. Her silver hair was impeccably arranged in her habitual French Twist, and her powder blue jogging suit gave evidence to the slim shape she'd managed to retain over the years. Her face was one that was well known on television, and Fox was not surprised that she was an even more gracious and beautiful woman in person.

"Can I get you some coffee?" Fox offered as the Senator made herself comfortable on his couch.

"None for me, thanks — caffeine gives me the jitters," she smiled up at him with her photogenic face and startling blue eyes. "You can tell me a little about what I'm doing here, however. You were pretty vague on the telephone last night."

"I am sorry about that," Fox said, dropping into a leather-covered chair not far from his guest. "I guess I'm starting to get paranoid and suspect all sorts of things."

Ashland waited for a moment. The Air Force officer did seem a little less than relaxed in his own home environment. "What IS this about, Colonel?"

Fox crossed his legs and draped his hands over the arms of his chair. "What do you know about a research and development firm by the name of the Centre?"

"You mean that place that blew up a couple of weeks ago — the one in Delaware?" she asked with a blink. When he nodded, she shrugged. "Very little, I'm afraid. Should I know about them?"

"Frankly, I'm just as glad that you don't," Fox admitted. "They recently underwent a major upheaval in administration, and evidently the new Chairman over there has decided to take the place legit. She's cancelled all kinds of research contracts where the work being done was in the least bit questionable."

"Sounds admirable," Ashland settled back against the comfortable cushions behind her. "I hear a 'but' coming, however…"

Fox nodded. "Some of those contracts were made by apparently legitimate-sounding military officials representing themselves as associated with the Pentagon. When the Centre shipped all the documentation back to the Pentagon, along with all unspent funding, these so-called military officials started calling and meeting with Centre personnel, trying to get their projects restarted."

Ashland scratched behind her collar. "This is all very interesting, Colonel, but I still fail to see what this has to do with me."

"I'm coming to it," Fox assured her. "I'm just laying out the situation in full as I know it at this moment, so that you'll see my dilemma."

"I'm sorry," she said, folding her hands in her lap. "Please continue."

"Then one of these so-called military officials called the chemist in charge of a particular project — code-named Veracity — and made her an offer to surreptitiously restart the project even though her boss had eighty-sixed it. The chemist promptly reported this to her boss, and her boss got in touch with me. We had a tap put on the line, and I was there when this Colonel Stiller contacted the chemist again. She turned him down flat — and he didn't sound happy at all."

"I'm not surprised…"

"Yesterday, this chemist was attacked in broad daylight at her home — received a superficial cut around the circumference of her throat." Fox pulled his forefinger across to illustrate his point.

"I'd say you have a rogue officer and simply need to call in the MP's on him," Ashland suggested with a shudder.

"I would do that and figure that was the end of it, but some of the things that this man said to the chemist during the call we overheard made me suspicious. He spoke about being a part of the group of people. So I had a tap placed on HIS phone — and lo and behold, he soon got a telephone call from a superior officer who was also involved in this whatever-it-is conspiracy."

"And just who was this superior officer?" Ashland asked, now fascinated.

"An attaché to one of the Joint Chiefs — a General Curtis." He could see that he now had the Senator's full attention. "So I started running down the names of the people who had gotten in contact with the Centre administration directly. Seems that same General Curtis had made a personal visit to the Chairman — accompanied by a Senator Harold Burns."

"A Senator!" Ashland was shocked and dismayed. "What the hell have you uncovered, Colonel?"

"I wish to God I knew, Senator. My aide and I went down to the secured archive to take a look at some of the documentation for this Veracity — and it was gone. I asked for the sign-in logs and was told they had been classified…"

"Since when are logs classified information?" Ashland demanded.

"That's a good question." Fox's eyes flashed. "That's when I got in contact with Carl, and that's when he got in contact with you." Fox leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "I'm essentially running an investigation without authorization at this point because I don't know who to trust to hand my evidence to — obviously this goes up to some of the highest levels of authority. I can't pull in Stiller without tipping my hand to the rest that there's an investigation going on. I can't go to just anybody at the Pentagon, because Curtis' influence could be widespread, and again I'd be tipping my hand to a co-conspirator. As for the Senator…"

"I think I finally begin to see where I come in," Ashland nodded somberly. "I'm a sitting member of the Senate Ethics Committee, and I have an established record of successfully going after Pentagon problem children and unscrupulous defense contractors." She crossed her arms over her chest and tucked her chin and thought for a moment, then looked up. "All right, Colonel. Precisely what is it you want from me?"

"I need someone on the Joint Chiefs who is beyond reproach to quietly authorize me to set up phone taps and surveillance on those military men implicated in this — and I need civilian assistance setting up much the same on your end."

"Done," she said quickly. "Admiral Greg Samson owes me one — I'll explain the situation to him and get you your authorization. You might have to get clearance from your own direct superiors to work for the Navy…"

Fox sighed. "I think I can swing that." Somehow.

"And I know a man in the FBI. He's not at the top of the heap, but he's sharp. I'll have him give you call in the next couple of days to coordinate your efforts on that end. AND I'll try to keep an ear to the ground on the Hill and see what this Burns fellow is into — what committees he sits and what his record is."

"Don't do anything overt," Fox warned her. "We want these guys caught — we don't want a single one of them to slip through our net."

Ashland stood and pulled a business card from her jacket pocket. "Here are my phone numbers — office, home and private. I have yours already…" She pulled out her other hand and showed him the card he'd given to Javitz. "Carl said to tell you he'd made a copy."

Fox rose immediately. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help, Senator," he breathed a sigh of relief. "Now, perhaps, you can understand my paranoia…"

"Indeed I can, Colonel," she said with a nod. "And unfortunately, I have a hunch that before this is over, that sense of paranoia of yours may become quite contagious."

Deb walked out the arcadia door into her grandfather's back yard and strolled aimlessly around the edges of the lawn. Several of the rose bushes still had fragrant blooms on them, and she paused and bent to stick her nose in one and pull in a lungful of the sweet perfume. The day was again warm and sticky, and the feeling in the air was of an approaching storm. The clouds were gathering in the south, which was always a sign of turbulent weather ahead.

Inside the house, she knew all was quiet once more. Grandpa Sydney had returned to his therapy machine on the daybed and settled down to a nap, something that she suspected was becoming a set routine for the older man now. Kevin had retreated to his reading in the living room again, and considering how much she had interrupted his work the afternoon before, she didn't dare join him today. Miss Parker had called and promised to be by later in the afternoon to prepare supper for all of them, as had been the pattern in days long gone by. She had considered climbing into her car and driving in to Dover to see her father, to let him know that she was actually feeling better, but the possibility of bad weather had convinced her to put that off until the next day.

She eyed Davy's tree house for a while and then carefully mounted the awkward rungs of the ladder until she was standing slightly bent in front of the tiny aerie. Davy and her father had built this three years previous while Grandpa and Miss Parker had provided advice and moral support from the ground. The little building in the arms of an old maple tree was really very complete, with a roof and three walls that protected any inhabitants from view from any other yard but Grandpa's. A canvas tarp had been mounted such that it could be brought down as a fourth wall to give a young boy complete privacy. A railing protected tree house inhabitants from falling off the edge of that open fourth side and gave something to hang onto as one climbed the last few rungs.

Following the example of her young cousin so many times in the intervening years, Deb sat down on the edge of the platform, hanging onto the railing and dangling her feet over the edge. It was time for her to think through the results of her talk with her grandfather that morning, as well as her discovery in the bathroom that Kevin and Sydney were right — she wasn't covered in handprints. She had come out of the bathroom like a shot, her tee shirt barely pulled back into place, and run to her grandfather's side and nestled into his arms, excited and upset. Grandpa had just held her without saying a single word and let her slowly stop her trembling as she rested against him.

She leaned her forehead against the railing and closed her eyes. What she still wanted to know was why, if none of this was any of her fault, did it take her just closing her eyes to begin to feel those groping, painful hands and fingers creeping all over her body again? She breathed a shaky sigh — disappointed that apparently letting go of the sense of guilt for causing her own misfortune had not banished the nightmares that still beset her. What was it going to take to let go of the memories now?

There was a rumble of thunder, and she raised her head to look off to the south again. Clouds that had been just beginning to gather when she'd climbed the tree were now gathered and turning dark. She heard the arcadia door open and looked down to see Kevin coming out into the yard, obviously looking for her. "I'm up here," she called and waved at him from her perch.

"It's going to rain," he called back, coming over to stand just under her. "Come on in the house now."

"I think I'll sit it out up here, thanks," she told him with feet still swinging back and forth over the edge of the platform. "I like it up here."

"You'll get wet."

She shook her head at him. "No, I won't — unless I decide I want to. I can just scoot back and pull the tarp and stay dry and warm as a bug in a rug." She looked down at him, her blonde hair waving in the growing breeze. "Why don't you come up and join me and see?"

Kevin looked back over his shoulder at the house where his mentor was still fast asleep on his daybed while the therapy machine slowly worked his knee. He thought about going back to his reading, and then smirked and put out a hand to begin scaling the nailed on rungs of the ladder up into the tree house. He pulled himself up through the hole in the platform to find Deb sitting very close to him. He looked around.

There was a box nailed to the interior wall of the tree house that evidently served as Davy's personal bookcase. Kevin bent and got close enough to read the cover of the top magazine. "Superman?" he read aloud and then turned questioning eyes to Deb.

"Super hero," she answered. "He's faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, can leap tall buildings in a single bound…"

"And this is true?" Kevin's chin had dropped to the floor, and he came over to sit next to his friend in confusion.

She was shaking her head and chuckling. "No, silly. They're just comic books, and Superman is make-believe — the product of somebody's overactive imagination. But he makes for a pretty good story sometimes. Davy likes them a lot." She put out her hand as she felt the first huge drop hit her forehead. "Do you feel like getting wet?"

"I don't think so," he shook his head.

"Then follow me," Deb ordered and pulled her legs up over the edge of the platform and scooted back until her back was against the back wall of the tree house. Kevin followed close behind her, driven by the three drops that had hit his nose and back of his neck. She bent forward and gave a tug on the tarp that had been thrown up over onto the tree house roof, and it came flopping down and closed off most of the increasingly chilly breeze. "See?" she said, finding a place close by him, "all warm and dry."

"And dark," he replied.

Deb looked around her. It WAS dark with the tarp pulled down — the canvas was thick enough to block out most of the late afternoon light. The sound of raindrops slowly increased from an occasional tap on the plywood roof until it was a continual patter. There was a rumble of thunder from far closer than she had expected, and Deb flinched back against the wall of the tree house — and into Kevin's shoulder.

"Are you OK?" he asked curiously. "Are you afraid of thunder?"

"Not usually," she answered truthfully, cringing again as another sharp crack rang through the air and the edges of the canvas were illuminated in the flash of lightening followed by another sharp snap.

"Here," Kevin lifted his arm, much as he had the afternoon before, only this time was the one to move closer and wrap the arm around her gently. Deb sighed and leaned into him, and he once more surrounded her with his other arm to hold her close. "You gotta admit that this was much more comfortable on the couch in the living room," he commented after a few minutes.

"What's the matter?" she asked. As far as she was concerned, she was thoroughly contented to let his arms hold her and protect her from the memories and nightmares that could and often did come at her in the darkness. Her time with him yesterday had kept all the nightmares away too — a fact that presented a number of different thoughts to her all of a sudden.

"Cushions are more comfortable than plywood to sit on," he announced as if after hours of scientific research.

"Thunderstorms don't last that long," she told him with a chuckle but then flinched again as a crack of thunder sounded as if overhead. She felt his arm tighten comfortingly around her and snaked her arm around his front to hold him back too. It struck her that she didn't have to remind herself that he wouldn't hurt her like she had the day before either. "Besides, this is kind of nice."

"You're feeling better." It wasn't a question.

She nodded against his chest. "You helped a lot yesterday."

"I did?" He was genuinely surprised. "I didn't do anything…"

"Yeah, you did." She leaned in a little closer. "You gave me the truth when I couldn't take it from my own eyes."

"You mean about seeing where that man touched you?"

She nodded again. "And then you showed me that I didn't have to be afraid of you doing the same thing."

That startled him. "You thought I would…" It was enough to make him loosen his hold.

"I wasn't thinking clearly," she said, hanging onto him tightly to make up for the loss of his embrace. "For a while, the only men I trusted were Uncle Jarod and Grandpa."

"And now?"

"I trust you." She said it in a tone of complete conviction. "I know you'd never hurt me." She felt the arms slowly fall back into place around her, and sighed in relief. "I'm sorry I doubted you."

"I don't understand any of this," Kevin said with a shake of the head. "I don't understand how anyone would do such a thing, and I don't understand your reactions…"

"I don't understand my reactions either," Deb admitted in a small voice. "That's most of the trouble."

The air in the little tree house turned chilly, and suddenly the sound of the rain hitting the plywood roof changed to a much harder, more driving sound. "It's hailing," Deb said softly, listening. She snuggled closer. "It's cold."

He tightened his hold on her once more and rested his cheek against the top of her head. "Better?"

"Mmm-hmmm," she nodded against him and relaxed. They were quiet for a long moment, just listening to the pounding of the hailstones against the roof above their heads. "Do you remember the last time you were out in a rainstorm?" she asked finally.

"I'll never forget it," he answered immediately. "It was the first time I was out in a rainstorm too – up at the inn, Ben Miller's inn — where Jarod brought me after he got me away." He chuckled in remembrance. "You thought I was crazy, standing out there in the rain. You brought me your dad's jacket."

"I think that was the last time I was really happy," Deb said eventually. "It wasn't but a day or so later when the bomb went off."

"I remember walking the beach with you there," Kevin reminisced. He also remembered holding her close and kissing her, but held that memory back in case it would upset her. It had been the best thing that he'd ever experienced — nothing since had even approached it.

"I remember other things too," she said knowingly, and he knew she was remembering too without mentioning it directly either. "Do you think we'll ever be able to go back to being like that again?"

"I don't know," he replied vaguely, nuzzling her hair and getting a whiff of the soft scent of her shampoo. He had forgotten until the day before just how good she smelled — like a bouquet of flowers. "Maybe — someday." He dreamed of it nightly, but for the time being, it seemed that reclaiming the closeness they had shared was an impossible dream, a hopeless one.

Deb rested against his chest and considered her options. This was Kevin — he'd never hurt her. He had held her before, and she had enjoyed his touch. And he had kissed her before, and she had enjoyed that VERY much. And right now, she was curious — would she ever be able to replace the horrible memories of degradation with gentler ones of him instead? The only way to find out would be…

She lifted her face from his chest and, when he looked down in the dim light to see what it was she wanted, stretched up the close the little distance between them. Their lips brushed, and like had happened weeks before, the contact was electric. Kevin held very still in complete shock, afraid to twitch or move in any way that would destroy the fragile moment. "What are you doing?" he whispered anxiously.

"Shhhh…" she hushed at him and stretched up again. This time he responded when contact was made, pressing back ever so gently. His pulse was starting to race — this was Deb in his arms again, just the way he remembered and so often dreamed and then despaired of her ever being again. He brought one hand up and cradled the side of her head tenderly. She shifted, turning more fully into him and reaching up to wrap her arm around his neck, pressing into the kiss more firmly.

Neither knew how or why it happened, but the kiss deepened. It was as if both had decided they wanted more and opened to the other at the same time. Deb felt a small moment of panic that quickly died when she discovered that he was in no hurry to rush in and overwhelm her. Her heart began to beat faster – with excitement, not fear. This was Kevin, and he cared for her. Feeling brave, she abandoned herself to the feelings that he was arousing in her that made her feel as if she were flying.

When at last the kiss ended, Kevin buried his face in her fragrant hair beneath her ear. "What are we doing?" he asked softly, then kissed her neck in such a gentle move that it raised the gooseflesh on her arm.

"It's called 'necking,'" she replied breathlessly, running the fingers of one hand through his hair and then tracing the outline of an ear with a forefinger in a caress that made him draw in his breath sharply.

"It's very enjoyable," he commented in a slightly deeper, more intense tone and then bent his head down to capture her lips again. This time he deliberately deepening the kiss and then thrilled to the sensation of her being as eager in seeking him as he was in seeking her. His hand at her back stroked down her back strongly and pulled her even closer into his arms while his hand caressed the line of her jaw and then traced a path down the column of her throat.

By the time their kiss ended this time, they finally became aware that the heavy pounding of both the hail and the rainstorm against the thin roof over their heads had ceased. "It's not raining anymore," Kevin breathed into her ear and then felt her lips trace a heated path up his throat as he gently kissed the ear and then the neck behind it.

"That's good," she replied and stretched up for another long, heated kiss that resulted in their both being quite flushed and breathless.

"I should go in and finish at least one project this afternoon," Kevin informed her, his tone and the fact that he continued dropping tiny kisses onto her cheeks and eyelids telling her clearly exactly what he'd much rather be doing.

"I suppose." Deb agreed reluctantly. She straightened, pushing herself away from him and rising up onto her knees. Kevin followed the same motion, seeing the logic in the way she was moving beneath the low-slung roof. He threw the tarp back and exposed a back yard that was glistening with moisture. "After you," she said, and waited for him to carefully climb down the wet and slippery rungs of the tree house first before following him.

They walked across the grass hand in hand, both bemused by what had just happened between them. Sydney looked up from his paper as the arcadia door slid open and let first Deb and then Kevin – both looking more than a little preoccupied – into the den. "You two were caught out in that mess?" he asked in surprise.

Kevin was shaking his head. "We were in the tree house," he explained with a glance at Deb, who merely blushed.

Sydney didn't miss the fact that Deb's hair was mussed and her lips looked a little swollen. A glance at Kevin told a similar story – and neither of them really wanted to look at him directly right now. Grey eyebrows climbed his forehead, but he kept his council to himself.

"I think I'm going to go upstairs for a while," Deb announced and slipped quietly away from her companion — and her grandfather's all-too-sharp eye.

Kevin watched her exit and then made a vague gesture in the same direction. "I… need to get back to work." He beat a hasty retreat, and Sydney heard him hit the couch in the living room with a big sigh that made the older man smile. It was all too obvious what had just gone on in the tree house.

Evidently Deb was trying to push her way out of the cocoon of fear that she had woven about herself and her heart. In that case, Kevin would be about as safe a man to test herself against as any she knew. He knew Kevin cared for his granddaughter deeply and would never deliberately do anything to hurt her in the least. He also knew that Kevin was well aware of the involuntary nature of the attack she was recovering from — and that the chances were that any advances that had triggered this little escapade had probably been made by Deb herself.

But considering discretion being the better part of valor, he decided that perhaps a private protégé-mentor discussion about the benefits and dangers in pursuing a relationship with a beautiful girl who was as attracted to him as he was to her might be in order. And it needed to happen SOON – before something considerably more intense than just necking in a tree house happened and jeopardized his entire therapy plan, not to mention threw a naïve and vulnerable young Pretender completely for a loop.

Perhaps Miss Parker could be prevailed upon to provide a similar mother-daughter talk with Deb when she arrived a little later on. It was clear what was going on: Deb was looking to move beyond her nightmarish memories — supplanting them with new ones that were far easier to deal with. It was a bold tactic, and an emotionally dangerous one.

"Thank you, sir." Fox saluted and then stood stiffly at attention waiting until General Potter had moved past him in the hallway. His direct superior, Potter had listened with interest to the reasons Fox was requesting permission to work temporarily with the Navy and then given his permission. Fox had timed his request carefully, catching the man on his way out of the Pentagon on a late afternoon for one of his famous fishing trips. This meant the man would be more eager to just make snap decisions and get on with things – and his reasoning had proven accurate.

He pulled the business card with Senator Ashland's phone numbers from his pocket along with his cell phone and dialed her cell number. After three rings, the call connected. "Hello?"

"Hello, Senator. This is Colonel Ted Fox."

"Colonel Fox! I've been expecting your call," the woman's brisk voice came over the line.

"I just received my permission to work with your Admiral Samson from my direct superior, ma'am."

Ashland raised her eyebrows at the rotund and aging black military man across the restaurant table from her. "I was just telling him about your situation, Colonel…." She paused as Samson held up a hand to catch her attention. "What, Greg?"

"Tell your Air Force Colonel to report to my office at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow morning with everything he has to date."

Ashland relayed the message. "I'll be in touch with you later, Colonel."

"Thank you, ma'am, and sorry to interrupt," Fox said contritely.

"You know how this town works, Colonel," Ashland replied, her blue eyes sparkling with mischief and intent. "I do you a favor – now you owe me one."

Fox nodded. "Yes, ma'am. And it will be an honor to repay that favor, ma'am."

"I'll talk to you later, Colonel," Ashland chuckled and disconnected the call.

"And now?" Samson asked his long-time friend with a salute of the whiskey glass.

"And now we go skunk-hunting," she answered, tapping her wineglass against his old fashioned glass. "Here's to success."

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	11. Turning Corners

Turning Corners

by MMB

"What do you know about a project named Black Hole, Syd?"

Sydney nearly choked on the mouthful of dessert and reached for his water to help swallow his food before coughing to clear his throat. "Which project did you say?"

"Black Hole," Miss Parker repeated quietly. "What do you know about it?"

He glanced at Davy sitting on his right and then at Kevin and Deb sitting on his left — determined to tailor his response to something suitable for their hearing. "It was one of the more despicable projects that Raines dumped into my lap when he made me head of Psychogenics," he replied finally, a bit cryptically. "Once you gave me permission to cull through the projects being carried out by my department, I was thrilled to put an end to it at long last." He sipped at his water again. "Why?"

"It was the second of the projects mentioned by name in a phone tap I heard of." She eyed him busying himself with his dessert. "It seems somebody wants it restarted in the worst kind of way. So you knew all about it?"

Sydney sighed and finally looked up at her. Kevin cringed — he'd seen that look on his mentor's face before, and he hated it. "Yes, I not only knew of it, but worked on it for a time. Jarod did the original feasibility study and was just starting preliminary chemical research on it prior to his escape," the old psychiatrist told her truthfully. "Then somebody in the Tower got this great idea about using a mutated strain of the Ebola virus as an air-borne bio-toxin and pre-empted our work on Black Hole to another team of researchers so that we could focus on the new study." Sydney's voice told of his discomfort with the entire process. "Ultimately, they felt it necessary to bring in another Pretender named Damon to convince Jarod to finish the work on that project when he started to refuse because of his concerns about how THAT work would be used." His eyes, as Parker looked into them, were tragic, defeated. "You know how THAT turned out…"

Miss Parker was sorry she'd pulled the information out of him in such a public way. "I'm sorry, Sydney," she said, wishing she could reach down the length of the table and take away his expression of guilt and despair — a look she hadn't seen on his face since before Jarod's return. It had been years since she'd seen for herself just how deeply the wounds from what he'd been forced to do with Jarod all those years had penetrated — or how very superficially they had healed in the weeks since Jarod had returned and forgiven him. She glanced to the side and saw Kevin carefully hide a deep scowl of displeasure at the pain she'd given his mentor.

Sydney just brushed aside her apology. "Nothing to be sorry for," he told her with a resigned tone. "That was life in the Centre back then. What else do you need to know about it?"

"What do you know about the man in Psychogenics who took over the project?"

"Ziegler?" At her nod, he shrugged. "He's an excellent research psychologist dealing with the causes and effects of brainwashing and re-education. I believe he had wanted to work on the project originally, but it had been given to Jarod by the Tower. He was thrilled to be assigned to it eventually after all."

"What kind of man is he?"

Sydney blinked. "What do you mean?"

"Would he be the kind of scientist who is so dedicated to his research that he'd be willing to accept a bribe to continue a discontinued project of long standing?"

The older man thought for a while. "He IS very dedicated to any project he has on-going — and he was particularly proud of the work he was doing on Black Hole, if memory serves. One of his last reports to me claimed to be on the verge of making a breakthrough in re-education techniques — for example, helping an amnesiac re-acquire enough knowledge about a previous life that he or she could essentially pick up where they left off and resume their work, their relationships." He flicked his eyes up at Miss Parker's astonished greys and then back down at his food. "Or building a completely new identity for someone who had had their previous personality deliberately destroyed."

"So he might be tempted by the offer of financial reward to restart his research again — even though he knew that the Centre wanted no further part in it?"

Slowly Sydney nodded. "Ziegler is ambitious, Parker. He and I were both under consideration for the position of head of the department about six years ago — he didn't take being passed over very well."

"Six years is a long time to hold a grudge," she commented and then took a bite of the spice cake she had baked that afternoon that had had the entire household drooling for hours.

"To those who hold grudges, time is not an element, Parker," he pronounced somberly. "If you think that there is a chance that he would be approached to restart Black Hole, then he definitely deserves watching."

She nodded and went back to work on her spice cake. She'd talk to Sam in the morning and make SURE he had put the extra security on him in Berlin as well as have taps on his phone lines already in place by the time the man returned from his conference.

"I think I'm going to take a walk," Kevin announced as he rose, picking up his dishes to set in the sink. He'd seen the regret flash across Miss Parker's face and knew that she would be wanting to make amends when she had a little privacy. He wanted to give her that space — for Sydney's sake.

"I'll go with you," Deb chirped and rose too. Kevin paused at the door, inwardly delighted to have her company and waited for her to put her dishes in the kitchen and then let her go ahead of him.

"Mommy, can I go out to the tree house?" Davy asked as he pushed away his empty dessert plate. "I want to bring some of my comic books home with me tonight."

"Sure, baby," Miss Parker replied in a distracted tone. She waited until all three were gone. "God, I'm sorry, Syd. I didn't mean…"

"Don't worry about it, Parker," Sydney reassured her. "Going through the hardcopy archives has given me plenty of opportunities to see what I was doing with a fresh perspective and wonder what the hell I was thinking at the time…"

She rose and came around the end of the table to put her arms around Sydney's shoulders and hug him to her. "It took us both a long time to wake up to what was going on around there, Syd," she said quietly and then felt him surround her waist with an arm. "And even once we knew, we couldn't change things. It just hadn't occurred to me that you and Jarod would have been involved in that one — that it had been an on-going project for THAT long — or else I wouldn't have asked in the first place."

"How could you have known?" he asked her gently.

"I also didn't know you were still beating yourself up over what happened back then," she told him in a concerned tone. "I know you and Jarod spent a great deal of time talking everything out during those first few days he was back and staying with you — or at least I THOUGHT you'd have talked it all out by now…"

"We did, Parker, we did. But we discussed things in more general terms, not always in terms of specific projects or events. And some of this…" He sighed again. "Some of the things I've been reviewing lately have reminded me of how much I did back then for which I still can't forgive myself — for which I have yet to atone in some way. A lot of people were hurt because of what I allowed to happen — and my punishment is that I cannot allow myself to forget my own complicity in that crime."

"Syd…" She hugged him even tighter while kicking herself for stirring up this morass of regret. "Maybe you should stop going through all of that stuff…"

"I'm the best qualified to go through those documents, and you know it." His arm tightened around her waist as he smiled grimly. "Let it go, Parker. Those memories are things that I take up with myself on a regular basis and will until the day I die — regardless of whether I have the hardcopy archives to go through or not. Let it go and sit down, sweetheart. I need to talk to you about something else right now."

"OK…" She said reluctantly. Her arms tightened briefly before she let him go and dropped into the chair that Deb had abandoned. "What's on your mind?"

"Deb," he said, his chestnut eyes meeting hers, "AND Kevin."

"Oh?" Her delicately arched brows climbed her brows. "Is there a problem?"

"Not yet — and I'm trying to make sure we don't end up with one in the end. You know that storm we had this afternoon?"

She nodded. "It made the lights flicker over at the townhouse…" she said, and then added when he glanced at her in surprise, "Davy and I are cleaning the place up. When Jarod gets back with Ginger, we'll be needing a bigger place." She shook her head. "But you were saying — and Deb and Kevin?"

Sydney shook his head to dismiss the concerns that arose with the thought of her trying to actually live in a house where she had so many bad experiences and to refocus on the issue at hand. "Yes. Well, it seems Deb and Kevin spent the time up in the tree house." He gazed into her eyes and then dropped his little bomb. "Necking. The evidence when they came back into the house was unmistakable."

Miss Parker's jaw dropped for a moment, and then she recovered quickly. "You don't say," she commented, sitting back in her chair. She shot her old friend a knowing look that held the beginning of a smirk. "Deb must be making better progress with her therapy than I thought she was, then. When last I knew anything, she was still so scared of Kevin she wasn't even speaking to him."

"Things are starting to come clearer for her, yes," Sydney nodded, "and Kevin has played a role in helping her face some of her demons. My concern now is that she might rebound from her experience into forming too much of an attachment to him — or even looking to him to help her prove to herself that she can have a romantic or sexual relationship with a man. Neither of them are ready for…"

"She's had boyfriends before, Sydney," she soothed, "and nothing untoward happened — you know that." She smiled in remembrance. "But then, I also remember you and Broots both being nervous wrecks when she'd go out on dates when she was a teenager — imagining worst-case scenarios and feeding each other's anxieties about what COULD be happening to her…" She reached out a hand and took one of his in it warmly. "I swear, considering the way you behaved, if you'd been my father for real, I'd have driven you completely bald and grey long before now." The two of them chuckled warmly and wistfully, and then she sobered. "But the fact is that this sounds basically like more of the same situation. She's survived the sweaty clutches of amorous young men her age just fine — and Kevin is far more of a gentleman than most of them ever hoped to be."

"True," he agreed. "But while she seems to have made a breakthrough regarding holding herself responsible for what happened to her, she still has the typical nightmares where she essentially relives the entire episode from beginning to end on a nightly basis. AND she still has the Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome sitting in the background, just waiting for the right moment — a word, a smell, a touch — to bring her house of cards crashing down around her ears again. Now that she's conquered her fear of Kevin, she's naturally going to him as a refuge and security blanket — and he's still so enchanted by her that he's absolutely thrilled at the idea, as you can imagine. For what it's worth, I found them asleep in each other's arms on the couch last night and had to awaken them both for supper."

Parker's eyebrows did another rapid ascent while Sydney nodded sagely. "Mind you, I don't entirely disapprove — I've always held that Deb and Kevin would be good for each other — but I'm just seeing where things COULD go if a little caution isn't observed. Maybe that's being an alarmist, but we have to remember that Kevin is so inexperienced that he's likely to let her take the driver's seat in their relationship. He's likely to have let her initiate what went on up in the tree house, which is what I suspect happened — and equally likely to let her convince him to start something that might be a little more difficult to put a halt to later on. Deb's a smart girl — and she may well have decided that there's no better way to get rid of persistent and bad memories than…"

"To make new ones to take their place." The parallel between her own intent regarding moving into the townhouse where she'd lived as a child and been physically abused and Deb's possible intent regarding her own experiences was unnerving, and she shot him a sharp glance for getting her to see her own reasoning tragically misapplied.

"Exactly."

"Have you talked to Kevin about this?"

"I haven't had the chance yet," he admitted. "It will have to be a very frank and very private talk with no danger of distractions or interruptions. I figured I'd talk to him after Deb went to bed this evening. BUT…" he gazed at her intently again, "I was hoping I could convince you to have a similarly private and frank conversation with Deb — from a woman's perspective."

Miss Parker sighed. "I'll do what I can, Sydney, but she's an adult — and so is Kevin. And it IS their life…"

"I know," he grumbled. "That's what I'm afraid of."

She patted his hand with hers. "You know, it's times like these that I really do wish you had been my father, Sydney. I'd never have grown up spending so much of my life wondering if anybody could ever learn to love me. With you, there's no doubt of your affections."

His chestnut gaze rested warmly on her face. "I loved you very much in my own way back then, Parker —even if I didn't say much — and you know it," he reminded her softly. "We would never have what we have now if I hadn't."

"If it had been you, I probably wouldn't have done half of the things I did when I was younger — and you wouldn't be any more bald or grey than you are now. Most of that stuff I did to try to get Daddy to pay attention to me — and it never worked…"

"Speaking of whom…" He brought his other hand over and patted hers. "You need to tell me about this idea of yours to move into your father's old house." His expression developed a healthy dose of skepticism. "Are you sure you want to do that? You have a lot of your own bad memories firmly linked to that place…"

"Relax, Sydney." She turned fond eyes on her foster father. "I'm not going to suffer a Post-Traumatic Stress flashback, if that's what you mean," she reassured him with a smile. "I was even in Daddy's library to dust and managed not to get TOO creeped out. And when Jarod gets here, I'll have plenty of help dealing with anything that bubbles up out of the past — and two healthy and active children running through the place to exorcise any residual ghosts."

"You're sure?"

She shook her head at him. "You must have taken an extra dose of your fuss-budget pills today. You're clucking like an old mother hen tonight — first about Deb, then about Kevin, and now about me."

"You're all very important to me, Parker," he claimed with no small amount of emotion. "I care about you."

"I know, Syd," she replied, pulling her hands from his, standing and putting her arms around him again as he sat in his chair. "I love you too. Very much." She kissed his forehead and straightened, then smiled as his arms went around her again and he leaned his head into her stomach.

Lauren Mitchell sat at her kitchen table, several books spread open in front of her, taking notes on her reading. The new project that she'd been assigned to was intriguing — working on a new antibiotic that would begin to address the number of staphylococcal infections so rampant in hospitals lately. But her first efforts would be to look at the chemical make-up of the various existing upper-end antibiotics to determine where to begin her modifications. This was work she had brought home the day before — today she had browbeaten her now ever-present sweeper bodyguard to let her drive home for her briefcase. With no television in the little apartment, there was little to entertain herself with.

She knew that Hugh, the bodyguard who had appeared on Xing-Li's doorstep last night after the frantic call to Centre Security, was sitting in the living room probably bored out of his skull with the lack of any reading material designed to appeal to males. Still, his mere presence was enough to give Mitchell a chance to relax and genuinely concentrate on her reading and note taking after cleaning up the dishes from the meal she'd prepared for them both.

Hitting a wall intellectually, Mitchell stood and stretched — walking away from the data and her musings for a moment. "Can I get you a soda?" she asked her protector. "They gave me both 7-up and Pepsi…"

"No, thanks, I'm fine," was the answer as the telephone rang.

The sweeper rose and came into the tiny kitchen as Mitchell reached for the handset with a trembling hand. "Hello?"

"I can see you." The voice was ground out, but Mitchell had heard it often enough now that she recognized Stiller's tones immediately.

"I told you to leave me alone," she snarled, her face turning pale. Hugh came over and bent, and she tipped the handset so they both could hear his response.

"I see you haven't bothered to try to finish weeding your flowers. Naughty, naughty, Doctor. Don't flowers deserve respect too — or is abandoning THEM the way you operate at home too?"

Mitchell and her bodyguard stared at each other for a long moment as it slowly registered that Stiller was watching Mitchell's home — seeing the movement of the other sweepers within the house. Hugh straightened and put a finger to his lips and, reaching into his pocket for his cell phone, headed for the front door after signaling her to keep the man on the line.

"I didn't abandon them, asshole — you interrupted me." She leaned her head against her other hand weakly, shaking inside and out, but forcing her voice to be firm and unwavering.

"That's just a technicality," Stiller smoothed into her ear. "So. Have you reconsidered yet?"

"No," she told him with a heat that was mostly show, "I told you I wouldn't work on your project if my life depended upon it."

"That's just it, dear lady — your life DOES depend on it." Stiller's voice dropped in tone, becoming threatening, lethal. "Do you think I'm standing out here watching you as part of an evening's constitutional? This is a final warning, Doctor Mitchell. You have two minutes to call me back at this number and tell me you'll do as we want, or I'll be visiting you again."

"What number is that?" she asked frantically, forgetting for the moment that he wasn't outside this apartment, but rather outside her home in Blue Cove.

"555- 8732," he answered in a hiss. "Two minutes." The call disconnected.

"HUGH!" she screamed.

The sweeper barreled through her front door, cell phone still at his ear. "Yeah — it looks like he's off the line now. Keep a close eye." He took the device from his ear. "What did he tell you?"

"He gave me two minutes to change my mind before he comes at me," she shivered violently.

"You mean before he comes at a pair of sweepers pretending to be you," the big man reminded her coolly, "in a house we've wired for sound and video six ways from Sunday." He put the cell phone back to his ear. "She says he gave her two minutes, so be ready." He nodded and disconnected.

"What do I do?" she looked up at him and then started badly when there was a loud knock on her door.

"Adams, open up!" Sam's voice demanded brusquely.

Hugh moved swiftly to let his boss in. Sam surveyed the condition of their threatened scientist with a quick glance. "I heard," he told his man quickly. "I was just upstairs. I've called the Blue Cove PD — they'll have two cruisers on site at the house in just a few minutes — hopefully about the time Stiller tries to break in."

"Lauren?" Xing-Li stepped carefully through the still-open door, her eyes focused on the American woman who had spent hours with her the previous night, too frightened to move. Mitchell reached out a hand to her new friend, and the tiny Chinese woman moved quickly to sit next to her and held her hand tightly. "Is the man coming for her again?" she asked her roommate's fiancé shyly. She still was very intimidated by the man's sheer size.

"He can't get to her here, Xing-Li," Sam shook his head. "But maybe you can stay with her and help keep her calm?"

The small woman nodded and bent toward her new friend solicitously. Mitchell seemed relieved to have her friend with her and clung to the outstretched hand tightly.

"I'm heading over to the Mitchell residence," Sam announced, "Call Harrison and have him meet me there. Tell him to call Colonel Fox — we may have a prisoner for him, IF he chooses to take custody of him."

"Yes, sir," Hugh nodded compliance and pulled his phone out of his pocket again.

"Where are you going?" Mei-Chiang asked from halfway down the stairs toward the excitement in the downstairs apartment.

Sam immediately paused and turned, putting a cautious hand on his lover's arm. "Go back upstairs and finish packing, Mei. There's some Centre business I have to take care of right now." He stretched toward her on the stairs and kissed her gently. "I'll be back for you as soon as I can. Stay inside and lock the door — only let Xing-Li in."

"You will be safe?" she worried at him, clutching at his arm.

"I'll be fine," he assured her hurriedly. "Go on now." She started back up the stairs, looking over her shoulder often as he rushed away toward his car.

Kevin felt Deb slip her arm around his waist as they walked slowly down the sidewalk, and he lifted his arm and put it around her shoulder. This was wonderful, he decided — the evening air was soft and sultry, and he had Deb beside him. After a very rough time, life was starting to definitely look up. He could only hope that Miss Parker was doing a good job fixing the damage she'd made to Sydney's mood.

"Penny for your thoughts," Deb said quietly.

"Hmm? Just hoping Miss Parker is apologizing to Sydney and doing a good job," he answered honestly. "There are times…"

"What?"

He shook himself. "Nothing. I'm finding that your grandfather is a very deep person. I don't know his past very much, but I don't think he's very comfortable with some of the things he did…" He winced. "I hate what it does to him when someone reminds him…"

"That seems to be a by-product of working for the Centre," Deb observed gently. "Even my Dad has his moments when he just… closes down." She matched her steps with Kevin's slow pace. "Do you ever think about it? What you did?"

"Yeah. I try not to right now, because I have other things more important to think about, but…" Kevin's voice was resigned, "one of these days I know I'll want to go through MY work to see what I'm responsible for. I know that some of what I did ended up in the hands of bad people." He sighed. "I don't want to think about it, but one day…"

"In the meanwhile, you sure are getting the down side of life thrown at you," she said astutely. "Sydney shot, then his knee damaged, Davy and me kidnapped…"

"Yeah, but Sydney's slowly getting better — his side is much better now for him being down all the time while his knee mends, you know. And you and Davy are home again, safe and sound." His arm around her shoulder tightened. "And we're friends again. Things seem to be getting much better now."

Deb didn't reply, but merely tightened her hold around his waist. Kevin was right — the past day had seen a definite up-turn in her perception of the world. Part of that, she knew, was due to the fact that her mind had been revisiting their very pleasurable time in the tree house rather than revisiting her time of horror in another house far away. The sheer relief that she'd experienced by not constantly finding her thoughts traveling that same painful path had been astounding. And the way her heart would begin beating faster as she remembered the feelings he'd inspired with his gentle kisses… how even thinking of those feelings made her heart beat faster yet again…

Kevin lifted his head as a car drove by. It was Ikeda-sensei, on time as always to take up his post watching over Sydney's house in the night. "My sensei's here," he told Deb as he turned them both around and began heading back. "It's time to head home."

"I'll probably need to start dishes pretty soon too," Deb mused, "if Miss Parker hasn't already got them done."

"They're probably wondering where we are," he chuckled. "It isn't often you and I go off together on the spur of the moment like that…"

"They'll get used to it eventually," Deb replied with a knowing, inviting tone that had Kevin's brows rising rapidly. "I like having you all to myself, even if just for a little while."

"I like it too," he agreed, finding his voice lowering and mellowing. He was still spellbound by what had happened in the tree house that afternoon — the sensation of holding her, kissing her, was still enough to confound him. Vernon had explained the mechanics of male-female relationships to him a long time ago — but nothing in those stark, lifeless discussions had prepared him for the way his insides could begin to quiver as he relived those moments in the tree house. They would become the stuff of a whole new set of dreams, he was sure.

They made their way silently back to the house and through the front door, separating only at the last minute before the door opened. "There you are," Miss Parker said as she caught sight of the two in the midst of a quick consultation with Ikeda. "Deb, do you think I could talk to you for a moment? Privately?"

Deb cast a glance at Kevin, an action that wasn't lost on Miss Parker, and then nodded.

"Sensei?" Kevin bowed to the ninja master and then followed the man at a respectful distance as they headed for the den and the back yard beyond.

"Why don't we come in here and talk," Miss Parker gestured toward the living room, with it's piles of boxes. Deb led the way and found a place on the couch, and then had Miss Parker join her a short distance away.

"Is everything OK?" the young woman asked.

"Grandpa wanted me to talk to you for a bit," Miss Parker began uncomfortably. "It seems that he thinks that you and Kevin might have been behaving in a way that could make things difficult for you both…"

Deb blushed and she looked down at her hands. "We didn't do anything wrong," she complained in a soft voice.

"I know you didn't, sweetheart," Miss Parker soothed, reaching out for and taking one of Deb's hands in her own. "And Grandpa doesn't disapprove either, if that matters any… Neither do I, for that matter."

"Then what…" Deb was confused.

Miss Parker gazed at her surrogate daughter. When had Deb gotten so grown up? "We're just concerned, that's all. You're just starting to put yourself back together after a pretty horrible time — and I know how hard it is to live with memories that make life difficult."

"No you don't…" Deb grumbled sullenly.

"Yes. I do." Miss Parker put a gentle finger under Deb's chin and forced the girl to look up at her. "My life hasn't been a bowl of cherries, Deb. I lived most of my life having nightmares night after night. Maybe not about the same kind of horror that you just lived through, but I promise you that I've lived through enough that I know EXACTLY how hard it is."

Deb cringed. Within those grey eyes that looked straight through into her soul, she could see the same kind of pain that lurked far more out in the open in her own gaze. "I'm sorry," she said finally and kicked herself. One day she'd remember that she wasn't the only person in the world with tragedies and problems.

"I'm sorry too in a way, but in a way, it helps me understand what you're going through now — and what kinds of ideas you might have about dealing with those memories." Miss Parker took one of Deb's hands in hers. "Especially now that you've discovered that Kevin is a decent young man that you actually want to spend time with again — maybe even want to let get close to you."

Deb blushed deeply. "Is this going to be a birds and the bees talk?" she asked, deeply embarrassed.

"Only if you think you need one," Miss Parker smiled at her. Syd was right. The girl WAS smart — too smart. "Kevin is a good-looking and attractive young man, and he's so completely overwhelmed by you that he'd do just about anything you wanted him to. Am I right?"

Deb didn't have the guts to look at her in the eye anymore. "I suppose," she said, still blushing desperately.

"Then maybe you want to consider the wisdom of asking him to do things that you won't be able to walk away from later," Miss Parker told her carefully. "Young men aren't like girls, Deb — they have a limit to how far they can be aroused before they lose their ability to stop or even think straight. And Kevin is very inexperienced with girls — he won't know the signals that are telling him that his body is starting to run the show if you get him too wound up. You could get yourself in deeper trouble than you're already in – and make him feel horrible after the fact because he COULDN'T stop if you decided to say 'no' when it was too late. I know he doesn't want to hurt you, and that he has a huge crush on you. I frankly think you two are very good together — just don't tempt him too far, sweetheart. He may not be able to handle it yet, and I doubt you could either right now."

"But we were just kissing," Deb complained again. "He… I…"

"That wasn't JUST kissing, Deb, and you know it." Miss Parker's voice was certain, even though it wasn't accusing.

"But…"

"Tell me this much: do you like him?"

Deb looked up sharply. "Yes. Very much."

"How much?"

Deb blushed and looked away again. "A lot…"

"Enough that you want him to touch you… where HE touched you… to help you forget?"

Deb squirmed and blushed more deeply. Could Miss Parker read her mind? All the time she'd been walking with Kevin, feeling his arm around her shoulder, she'd been wondering…

"Enough to be thinking about letting him make love to you to wipe away ALL the bad memories at once?"

"I don't know," she admitted very softly and then looked up bravely. "Maybe." There. Let her chew on that! She wasn't a little girl to be chided like this anymore!

Yes, Miss Parker decided, somewhere along the line when she hadn't been looking, Deb had indeed grown up – enough that if she ever decided to take a man into her bed, there would be nothing anybody could do to stop her except warn her of consequences. If only she'd had somebody to warn HER before she'd embarked on a life of casual and consistently unsatisfactory sex in her youth!

"Be sure before you go there," she told the young woman in sympathetic tones. "Be very sure before you ask him into your bed or climb into his — and wait for a while if you decide that's what you want, just to make sure it IS what you want. You'd be doing more in that bed than just wiping away one set of memories with another. Besides, you remember what happened when you went home, how quickly you lost it?" Deb looked up, stricken, and nodded. "How would you feel if you lost it in the middle of making love with Kevin?"

The blue eyes widened. "No!" the young woman breathed in horror.

"Then be careful, sweetheart. You have a whole lifetime to put those horrible memories behind you — don't rush things and end up making more bad memories for yourself that will be even harder to put behind you."

"I just want him to help me feel better," Deb said softly with a crestfallen look on her face. "And he does…"

"I'm not saying stay away from him entirely, Deb," Miss Parker put out her arm and drew the young woman closer. "I don't think you could right now, nor am I saying that staying away completely would be the wisest thing to do. You've discovered that it feels good to let him kiss you, right?" Deb nodded against her shoulder. "There's nothing wrong with that, sweetheart. As a matter of fact, I think it's a good thing that you've chosen such a decent young man to trust again in that way. Just don't take it a whole lot further than kissing and necking – at least, not for a while. Take it slow, for both your sakes, OK?"

"OK," Deb agreed shakily. She rested her head against Miss Parker's shoulder and took a deep breath. No, she didn't want to lose it when she was with Kevin. But the more she thought about it, the more sure she was that one day she WOULD be with Kevin – in THAT way. He was nothing like the other boys she'd been with while growing up. Their awkward advances and groping she had tolerated – where Kevin's touch was like magic… The thought that his magic touch could erase the memory of crude and painful groping of the man who had molested her was incredibly attractive.

How far, she wondered with closed eyes, was going too far?

Stiller's eyes narrowed and he looked at his watch. Five minutes had passed – three more than he'd given the bitch in the ultimatum. He leaned over and retrieved the switchblade from the glove box and flipped it open and closed a couple of times, just for practice. The doctor was a beautiful woman – maybe he could have a little fun with her before he hurt her this time.

He climbed from the car and sprinted on silent feet across the two lawns between himself and her front porch. He listened. Not a sound came from within – and he smiled. She had probably locked herself in the bathroom, thinking THAT would keep her safe. Silly bitch!

He moved down the side of the house stealthily, and finally found what he was looking for: the bedroom window at the back of the house had been left slightly open to let in fresh night air. He used the switchblade quickly to dislodge the screen from the casement and lean it against the house on the ground, then lifted the window so that he could pull himself up and in. He tipped over the sill and did a slow somersault and roll so that he landed quietly on his feet. Flipping the wicked blade open, he began to creep toward the closed door to the rest of the house.

He didn't even get out of the bedroom. Suddenly he was caught from behind by two very powerful arms that literally picked him up bodily and spun him around, then pushed him forward onto the bed with a hard knee right in the small of his back to keep him pinned there. "Got him!" he heard bellowed into his ear, and then felt a stunning blow to his right hand, sending the switchblade skittering to the floor.

The bedroom light flared, just in time to see a man come barreling through the door with handcuffs already open and ready to snap on him. He struggled vainly to throw off whomever it was that was pushing the knee into his spine, but could get nowhere. In just another moment, the handcuffs were on his left hand, with the right being dragged behind his back and then linked tightly. At last the knee was removed – just in time for the second man to drag him to his feet – and at last he saw his attacker. The man was huge, muscular, and smiling as he pulled a cell phone from his trousers pocket and dialed.

"We got him," he barked into the little device even as the sounds of the front door bursting in broke the evening quiet.

"Blue Cove PD!" came the bellow from the front of the house.

"In here!" the big man bellowed back, then jerked hard on the cuffs as Stiller squirmed and tried to shake loose the hold these gorillas had on him before the police arrived.

Officer Donaldson followed the sound of the voice into a back bedroom and stopped short at the sight of two Centre sweepers merely holding a handcuffed man between them, waiting for him. "He's all yours," the one sweeper said in a brisk, business-like voice.

"You're under arrest," Donaldson informed the squirming and frowning man. "You have the right to remain silent – anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak with an attorney…"

"Shut up – I've heard it all before," Stiller snapped at Donaldson, then whirled on the first sweeper. "Where's the bitch?"

"Where you can't get at her," the big man grinned in satisfaction.

"Lookie what we have here!" the second sweeper crowed, picking up the open switchblade with a handkerchief and flourishing it at the police officer before putting it in a plastic bag provided by his colleague.

"Give it to my partner there," Donaldson instructed them and began dragging Stiller from the house and toward the squad car.

Sam pulled up behind the squad car just as Donaldson had inserted the sullen intruder into the back of the squad car and closed the door on him. "Got him, eh?" he asked the police office after bending and staring Stiller for a moment.

"Yup – and your men were just holding him for me, like we agreed. I take it the Centre will be filing charges?"

"Either the Centre or Doctor Mitchell herself – maybe both," Sam answered, knowing that Stiller was listening in. He saw Harrison climbing from his car and raised his voice enough to carry. "I'll have to be in touch with my boss to know exactly how we want to proceed as an organization – I'll make sure Doctor Mitchell comes down to the station tomorrow morning to make a complete statement about tonight's events. We still had the tap on her phone line – so you'll have another call to listen to."

"Take your time, Atlee," Donaldson patted Sam on the shoulder. "This bozo isn't going anywhere anytime soon."

Sam bent and smiled maliciously at the military man. "No, I don't think he is."

Sydney was waiting, propped up on his crutches in the kitchen door when Kevin finally came in from the back yard and his workout with Ikeda. The ninja took one look at the older man's face and wisely decided that his place was elsewhere. With a bow, he took himself to the front of the house.

"A word, Kevin?" Sydney beckoned with an outstretched glass of ice water, and Kevin walked forward to take the refreshment gratefully.

"Sure." He headed back into the den. "Where's Miss Parker?"

"She had to get Davy home early tonight," the psychiatrist told his protégé, moving to sit in an easy chair as a change from the daybed in which he'd spent far too much time lately. "Tomorrow's the first day of school, and he has to get up early."

"What about Deb?" Kevin leaned forward, but his friend wasn't in the kitchen – and he couldn't hear her in the front room with his sensei either.

"She's retired for the evening, I think," Sydney told him, then gestured at the recliner. "Actually, I was hoping to talk to you a little about Deb." The chestnut eyes pinned the young Pretender to his chair when he came up straighter in alarm. "And what you two were doing in the tree house this afternoon."

Kevin's blue eyes were immediately concerned. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Not as far as I know," Sydney reassured him. "I was just wondering about the status of your agreement with Cody Tyler – that you would be just friends with Deb until she was better?"

Kevin's face fell. "She said she was feeling better," he reasoned, but knew that it was a lame excuse. "I guess I was so surprised when she kissed me, that I didn't stop to think…"

"That's how it happens," Sydney told him gently, "and that's what you can't let it happen again. Deb is still far too close to a very bad experience – and even if you have no intentions of ever hurting her in that way, not thinking and letting things get out of hand could lead to all kinds of problems if you're not very careful."

"But Sydney, I would never do anything that she didn't want…"

"Kevin, that's what I'm saying. Deb doesn't know WHAT she wants – except that she wants to start feeling better about herself and feel safe in a relationship with a man again."

"She IS safe with me," the young Pretender insisted. "I'd never hurt her."

"I know that…" Sydney sighed. "What did Vernon teach you about…" His words skidded to a halt at the idea that he'd have to have a birds and bees talk with his protégé after all. "What do you know about human sexuality?" he finally asked uncomfortably.

Kevin's gaze was equally uncomfortable. "Enough to know that I wasn't given enough information at all," he said with some bitterness. "Vernon made it sound so cut and dried – boring, really, almost gross. But it isn't…" The young man's eyes softened at the memory of Deb in his arms, of kissing her… "There's so much more to it than I thought."

"That's what I was afraid of. Damn that Grey for chickening out on the more important duties!" Sydney grumbled. He looked over at his protégé sympathetically and then steeled himself for a long night of lecture, then question and answer. This was the price of mentoring a Pretender out into the real world, he reminded himself quickly. "Kevin, human sexuality has a whole lot more to it than simple physical mechanics — and that's because it is so tightly interwoven with the emotions and perceptions of each of the parties involved…"

"Do I have to go home now?" Mitchell asked Sam anxiously. "I mean, a judge could just release him on bail, and then he'd come after me…"

Sam shook his head. "For as long as you feel there is a threat, and I concur that you have good reason to feel threatened until this matter is settled, you can stay here. Perhaps you won't need Hugh in your living room for as long as Stiller is behind bars – but should Stiller actually be released, then I'll see to it that you have adequate protection until it's safe."

"What about my phone line?"

"We'll keep the tap on, just in case Stiller has a backup," Sam announced somberly, giving Mitchell reason to shudder. He noticed. "Even if he did have backup," he added reassuringly, "they still have NO idea where you are or how to get to you."

"I just want this to be over," Mitchell told him sincerely.

"I can understand that, Doctor," Sam answered sympathetically. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a business card. "If you need to call, do."

"I appreciate that, Mr. Atlee." Mitchell looked longingly at Hugh. "I just wish I could convince you to let Hugh be here one more night…"

Sam shrugged and looked over at his deputy. "Feel like camping out on a couch for another night there, Adams?" he asked, obviously leaving the decision in the big man's hands.

Hugh looked at Sam, looked at Mitchell, and then shrugged. "Might as well stick around," he announced. "All I'd be doing would be going home and watching the tube anyway…"

"You don't know how much I appreciate this," Mitchell said sincerely.

Sam started to back out of the apartment. "I have to help Mei get her stuff moved," he said with a jerk of the thumb over his shoulder, "so if you don't need me anymore…"

"I'm on top of the situation here, sir," Hugh announced and smiled at the woman he was protecting. For a scientist, she wasn't all that bad looking. "We're good to go."

Sam closed the apartment door quietly after himself and mounted the stairs to the second floor apartment two at a time. He knocked at the door and then smiled as Xing-Li answered.

"You caught the man who was after Lauren?" she asked immediately.

"Yup," he nodded with satisfaction, moving past her into the apartment and looking at the meager assortment of small boxes and one large suitcase in the middle of the floor. He looked into Mei-Chiang's face. "Is that it?"

"I'm afraid so," she replied, her face coloring slightly. "I regret to tell you that I have very little to bring to our marriage."

Sam's face broke into an easy smile. "I'm not sorry," he said truthfully. "It's a helluva lot easier on the back. Now if you were Miss Parker, I'd expect ten times this amount – just for starters!"

Mei-Chiang started slightly at the mention of her boss until she noticed that her bear of a fiancé was chuckling – giving her a bad time. Her dark eyes began to sparkle. "I can always spend my money on things other than a car," she threatened with a smile of her own, "and have you have to help me bring them home…"

Sam shot a look at Xing-Li that had the smaller woman chuckling shyly behind her hand. "Better let me out of here while I'm still ahead of the game," he stated quickly and grabbed the suitcase and the larger of the boxes.

"I can help," Xing-Li said as she picked up the three boxes that remained once Mei-Chiang had gathered four into her arms. "Just everybody be careful on the stairs."

Leaving the door open for the time being, the three carried their load down to Sam's car and carefully packed the trunk. Mei-Chiang turned and hugged her former roommate. "You will find your own place soon," she assured her Younger Sister in tearful Chinese. "Of this I'm sure."

"I wish you luck with your big American husband, Older Sister," Xing-Li kissed Mei-Chiang on the cheek. Her Older Sister looked so happy, and was nobody's fool. Xing-Li realized that at least some of her fears about the habits of American men might need re-examination. If Mei-Chiang could find an American who would treat her as gently and lovingly as this Sam had been, then perhaps there might be another American for her someday.

Mei-Chiang climbed into the front passenger seat and watched as her future husband slipped behind the wheel. Then, with a wave of his hand, Sam backed the car away from the apartment building and aimed it back down the narrow lane to the gate.

"I am going to have to get used to your leaving me to go into dangerous situations, aren't I?" she asked him quietly.

Sam glanced over at her. "From time to time, I suppose — with any luck, it will happen less and less as the business settles down and people can get back to doing what they're supposed to do." He reached out and took hold of her left hand, brought it to his lips, and then held it behind the shift level. "Don't worry so. I survived the Centre under Lyle and Raines in much more dangerous situations than I'll encounter nowadays. I'm afraid you're stuck with me."

"That is my good fortune," she said softly, as always enjoying the feeling of safety that came with his touch. "Didn't you know that being kissed by a giant economy sized bear is very famous Chinese good-luck charm?"

Sam's jaw dropped a little, and then he let out a healthy belly laugh.

Ted Fox put his tumbler of whiskey on the counter and reached for his telephone after checking his watch. Who on earth would be calling him this late? "This is Fox."

"This is Chip Harrison, Centre Security. I just thought I'd let you know that our men caught your Colonel Stiller breaking into Doctor Mitchell's residence this evening with a switchblade after calling her and threatening her with bodily harm. The police have the switchblade that he was carrying — with any luck, it will be the same one he used when he cut her earlier. And WE have the video tape taken from inside the house, which we'll be turning over to the police in the morning. I take it you'll want a copy?"

Fox shook his head. "The man's an idiot," he commented dryly, "and yes, I'll want a copy of the tape. However," he continued, "what do you want me to do?"

Harrison blinked. "Well, he IS military… Mr. Atlee told me to call you and let you know that we have him, in case you wanted to take custody…"

"Not at all," Fox said, shaking his head and thinking fast. "Having Stiller in a civilian jail for the time being works out to my advantage, actually. Getting him moved to the brig on a military base puts him too close to those with the authority and desire to spring him. Let him stew where he is for the time being — I'll talk to my contacts and try to arrange a SECURE spot for him in a military facility. What's he charged with, anyway?"

"Breaking and entering, conspiracy to commit bodily harm, assault, assault and battery, extortion — quite a shopping list."

"Good. It should be enough that his superiors that are in on this won't be able to bluff their way to getting him released on his own recognizance or into military custody without the proper paperwork being filed with JAG." And I have a friend in that department who can make sure to keep him nicely bottled up, Fox thought to himself with a satisfied smirk. "I'll be in touch tomorrow with strategy for how to handle this without blowing my investigation out of the water before it really gets started."

"I'll tell Mr. Atlee to expect to hear from you then," Harrison said brusquely and, after saying his goodbye, disconnected.

Fox put the handset back on the receiver base and walked back over to retrieve his whiskey. So we have Stiller now, he thought to himself. Interesting…

Deb lay quietly in her bed, thinking through everything that had happened that day — the long talk with Grandpa that morning that had helped her so much. Then there was the delicious time spent in the tree house with Kevin and their walk after supper, and then the sobering talk she'd had with Miss Parker. And then, still awake, she had lain there listening for footsteps up the stairs that would tell her that Kevin was retiring, but the footsteps never seemed to come. As the evening wore on and became nighttime, she finally dozed.

Hours later she awakened abruptly, her heart pounding and her breath ragged and sobbing in her throat, reaching frantically for the switch on her night lamp. Desperately she peered around her, her eyes finding and attempting to plumb every pooled shadow about the room in case that man was still lurking in the room. Her dream had brought her attacker into her temporary home yet again — his hands reaching for her, grasping at her pajamas with long, claw-like fingers. She had felt once more the warmth of his breath on her breast, the rough calluses of his fingers between her thighs, moving closer...

She couldn't be alone. She couldn't stay here…

She bolted from the bed and then paused by the door, thoroughly terrified and confused. Grandpa was all the way downstairs in the den — and to get to him, she'd have to walk through a very dark and foreboding house that had a Japanese man hidden somewhere in it. No, she couldn't go downstairs — that was too dangerous. She couldn't stay here — her dreams were right there in the room with her, just waiting for her to lay down again in exhaustion.

Hesitantly she opened the door and peeked down the short hallway, only to find that the house was completely dark. Not even the strange Japanese man that Kevin so respected was in the hallway, blocking her path. She pushed open her door and tiptoed across the hallway to tap at the guestroom door softly, then opened it.

The sound of deep, regular breathing told her that Kevin was asleep — and it was a relief just to know that he was there. Shivering as much with the chill of fear as the chill of night, she made her way to the side of the bed. "Kevin?" she whispered once, and then again. Gradually the breathing shifted, broke rhythm, and Kevin roused. "Kevin?" she called out once more.

"Hmm? Wha?" He sat up in the darkness and rubbed his eyes to try to get rid of the sleep still in them.

"I'm scared," she said in a soft whisper. "Can I stay with you?"

Kevin awakened in a hurry at the sound of the soft whisper. "Deb? You really shouldn't be here…"

"I'm scared to be alone," she answered, hugging her arms around herself desperately to try to protect herself against the trembling. "Just… let me sit and talk to you for a while…"

"What's the matter?" He pushed himself up on an elbow and found he could barely make out the shimmer of her satin pajamas in the dim light.

"Nightmare," she replied with a shudder. "Please…"

He sat up. "I can take you down to Sydney, if you want…"

"No," she shook her head. "Let him sleep. Just let me stay with you for a little while, OK? Just until…"

Kevin rubbed his short hair in an effort to rouse himself a little further. "Sydney said that it probably wouldn't be a good idea for us to meet in either your bedroom or mine," he warned carefully. "We can go down to the living room…"

"We don't have to do that — I'll sit on the end of the bed, far away from you. We won't even touch," she offered with a frantic note in her voice. "Don't send me away, Kevin, and don't leave me — please!"

At last he reached out for the lamp on his night table and turned it on, illuminating the room and his midnight caller. Her hair was loose about her back and shoulders and mussed as if she'd been sleeping. Her face wore a haunted look that was like an arrow in his heart. "OK," he relented, moving his feet until he was sitting cross-legged in nothing but his pajama bottoms. "On the end of the bed then," he pointed.

She moved to the end of the bed and sat down, then twisted and pulled her legs in to sit cross-legged as well. As she sat there in silence, Kevin frowned to see her shudder and slump. "Are you cold?"

Deb looked up at him. "A little," she admitted.

"Here…" He peeled back the thin blanket that was currently doubling as a bedspread and handed the top hem to her. "Wrap this around you — it should help."

"Thanks," she muttered gratefully and did as he instructed. The blanket was indeed warm.

"What did you dream?" he asked finally when she didn't speak to him again for a very long moment.

The blue eyes came up to meet his, and they were frightened. "I dreamed he was in the house — in my room. I couldn't move, and he started to do… things…" she shuddered again. "I don't want to think about it now."

"But when you woke up, surely you knew he wasn't there," Kevin reasoned with her in a whisper. "You turned on your light and saw that he wasn't in the room…"

She shook her head. "All I knew was that I had to get out of there," she said with desperate firmness. "I wanted to feel safe. I feel safe with you," she told him shyly.

"But this isn't a good idea, Deb," he complained gently. "Sydney said…"

"I think Grandpa and Miss Parker are afraid that we'll actually do something — like maybe have sex together," Deb countered slightly sarcastically. "But they don't have to know about this…"

"I'd know," Kevin said simply and firmly. "I want to help you — I really do — but what Sydney told me tonight made a lot of sense, and was a little alarming."

"Alarming?" Deb looked up at him in dismay. "I'm alarming to you now?"

"No," he soothed, restraining himself from reaching out to her. "YOU aren't — what could happen IS."

She looked down at her hands. "You don't want to be with me, is that it?"

"That's not it, Deb," he breathed in mild exasperation. "I think what happened this afternoon and our walk this evening should prove to you that I want very much to be with you — but Sydney's right. I don't want do anything to hurt you in the process of making us both feel good — and I can't trust myself to know where to stop."

She looked up at him again, this time in challenge. "What if I don't want you to stop?"

Kevin swallowed hard and stared back. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," she said in a very serious tone, suddenly needing to know, "what if I don't want you to stop? What if I want you to keep going?"

He was astounded. "You mean, go ahead and have sex? For real?" She nodded, her eyes glued to his face. Suddenly he needed to know. "Have you ever had sex before?"

"No… I mean…" She looked down. "Not until that man…"

"What did he do to you?" Kevin asked very softly, cringing inside when Deb slumped. "I need to know what really happened to you. Sydney only told me a very vague 'he touched you without permission,' and I think it was a lot more than that. Am I right?" She nodded reluctantly. "What did he do?"

"He did touch me," she said so softly that he could hardly hear her. "All over. On my breasts, on the inside of my legs, and on… in…" She took a shaky breath. "He pinched my breasts so hard it made me cry, and then bit me until I bled. Then he shoved his hands into my pants and pushed his fingers into me hard, over and over again. It hurt so much!" A tear hit her cheek.

"I didn't know sex could hurt that way," Kevin whispered, aghast. "His fingers?"

"I think he WANTED to hurt me," Deb answered after another shaky breath. "But I don't think sex hurts when it's done right — when both people want it to happen." She looked at him again. "I don't think you would hurt me that way if I asked you to go ahead, to keep going…"

"But Deb, I think that was the point Sydney was trying to make with me tonight — that sex CAN hurt you in more ways than one, especially NOW, while you're still trying to work through what that man did to you," Kevin said softly. "He explained to me how our emotions and feelings get all tangled up with the way our bodies react to stimulation — and how there is a point that a man reaches when…" He sighed and gazed at her gently. "At that point, even if you wanted me to stop because you got scared or if you flipped out like you did at your house the other day, I wouldn't be able to — my body wouldn't let me. And then it would be even worse than what that man did to you, and it would have been ME… God, Deb, I love you — I don't want that to happen, and I don't know what to look for to tell me I'm reaching that point!"

"You love me?" Deb repeated in surprise, his confession deafening her to everything else he'd said. "Did you just say…"

"I know what I said," Kevin told her. "I don't know what else to call how I feel about you. I've never felt like this about ANYONE else, ever." He sighed deeply. "And feeling the way I do, I'm not going to take any chances of doing something that could hurt you, physically OR emotionally." He gazed at her fondly. "Even if you say you want me to keep going."

"So you're saying you love me, but that you won't touch me or kiss me anymore…"

"I didn't say that. Damn it…" Kevin shook his head in frustration and tossed caution to the wind as he bent forward and reached out to grasp her by the shoulders and pull her up the length of the bed into his arms. "There." He bent and kissed her briefly and passionately. "And there. Are you happy?"

"Yes." Deb settled with an arm around him and laid her head on his shoulder, feeling truly safe and contented at last. "I think I love you too," she said softly, as if suddenly coming to recognition of her feelings for this gentle and sweet young man who was now apparently bound and determined to protect her, even from herself. It was a completely new experience to have a young man anxious to be patient and take things slowly rather than pushing at her to see how far she could be convinced to go as soon as possible.

"Then we need to be careful." Kevin closed his eyes and held her close to him. She was so special, so beautiful. There was nothing that he wouldn't do for her, provided it didn't harm her at the same time. If what Sydney said were correct, there would come a time when it would be safer to consider… other things. And if his mentor were right, patience now would be amply rewarded when that time came.

"Can you just hold me tonight then," she asked against his neck, "so I don't have to be alone?"

He nodded. "OK — for a little while, at any rate. Until you feel you can go back to your own room and sleep."

"I can't stay with you?"

"I don't think that would be such a great idea." Kevin's tone was soft and gentle — and very, very final.

Deb sighed and wrapped her arms around him just a little tighter. At least he was holding her now and making her feel safe from those horrific memories that still hounded and haunted her. "I love you, Kevin," she whispered, more and more convinced that she had found the truth. If what Miss Parker said were true, neither she nor Grandpa would really disapprove. And if they didn't, then Daddy could be convinced eventually too — and THAT would be something worth waiting for.

"I love you too, Deb," he replied, his mind whirling. He had made a promise to Tyler to only be her friend — to not take advantage of the situation but just remain friends with her until she was ready to let them both into her life again on an equal basis and eventually to make an honest choice between them. But things didn't seem to be working out in a way that was allowing him to keep that promise very well. Tyler was working at the Centre most of the time and he was… well, he was… HERE. It was he who was present when Deb needed to reach out for comfort — what was he supposed to do, turn her down flat?

He leaned himself back against the headboard so that he could hold her more comfortably against him, relishing the feel of her silky pajamas moving seductively across the bare skin of his chest. He decided that he'd have to have another long, frank conversation with his mentor —soon. He honestly didn't know if he could ever be comfortable sharing Deb with another man — not even with Tyler, who he liked and respected — ever again. And the idea of breaking a promise to a man he liked and respected was just as distressing as the thought of hurting Deb.

Why couldn't life be simple?

Feedback, please:


	12. Putting Things In Motion

Resolutions – 12

Putting Things in Motion

by MMB

Mei-Chiang looked up from her paperwork as her boss came toward her. "Good morning, Miss Parker."

"And good morning to you, Mei-Chiang," Miss Parker replied, stopping at the side of her secretary's desk. "Sam told me yesterday that you are going to be going through some major changes in your life. Congratulations."

Mei-Chiang blushed behind a strategically placed hand. "Yes, ma'am," she replied in embarrassment.

"Oh! Let me see!" Miss Parker reached out for the hand and bent down over it to examine the ring Sam had given his bride-to-be. She looked up into the almond eyes that just couldn't quite stop sparkling with happiness and grinned. "This is lovely!"

"Thank you," Mei-Chiang nodded gratefully. "He said it was his mother's."

Miss Parker's brows raised a bit. Sam had always been particularly closed-mouthed about his family and his background — this was the first sign that the trend might be loosening just a little. "I really am happy for the both of you," Miss Parker told her gently. "And I'm sure that HE'S happy — he was positively glowing when I saw him yesterday."

Mei-Chiang blushed just a little more deeply. "Will it be too much trouble if I asked to leave work an hour or so early today? Sam wants us to go into Dover and apply for the marriage license and get blood tests…"

Miss Parker straightened and patted the Chinese woman on the shoulder companionably. "You take as much time as you need. There isn't anything that needs desperate attention, and everything else can wait until morning."

"Thank you, ma'am."

Miss Parker hefted her briefcase again. "Now, if you wouldn't mind getting your fiancé on the phone for me, please — and then a cup of coffee along with my list of appointments for the day…"

"Yes, ma'am," Mei-Chiang said, reaching for her phone already. "I'll be right in with your coffee."

Miss Parker walked toward her inner office door and heard her secretary announce into the telephone, "Mr. Atlee, Miss Parker would like to speak to you, could you please hold?" and walked through her door with a contented smile. There would be no problem with those two working at the Centre together, she could tell. She had just seated herself when the intercom buzzed with "Miss Parker, Sam is on three for you."

"Thank you," she responded and picked up the telephone. "Sam. Good morning."

"Good morning, Miss Parker. What can I do for you?"

"I talked to Sydney last night about the scientist in charge of the Black Hole project, and he tells me that THIS man deserves watching. He's a product of the Old Centre and actually enjoyed the work he was doing on Black Hole…"

"Oh, wonderful," Sam commented dryly. "JUST what we need…"

"Tell me about it," she replied in a similar tone. "Anyway, Sydney is of the opinion that if Ziegler were approached by military contacts interested in convincing him to restart the project quietly, he'd go along with them. I want surveillance on the man starting immediately. Call Berlin and have them assign him a couple of sweepers, tell him there's been a threat — whatever — just get people with him. And have a bug put in his phone line there and all his private and Centre lines here. If he gets contacted, I want to know about it — if he's already been contacted and starts making reports, I need to know about that even faster."

"Yes, ma'am," Sam noted down his instructions so that he could work on it immediately after the call was concluded. "You did hear that Stiller made another run at Doctor Mitchell last night — called her and threatened her again, then broke into her house."

"We have him?"

"Blue Cove PD has him at the moment, but yes, ma'am." Sam sounded thoroughly satisfied.

"Good. I want a man watching the PD to make sure nobody springs him either," she directed, and nodded thanks to Mei-Chiang who had quietly brought her the coffee and day's schedule she'd requested.

"I had Chip call Colonel Fox last night to let HIM know of the developments here. It's possible Fox will want him in military custody."

"Colonel Fox we can trust," Miss Parker told him, "but nobody else. Where's Doctor Mitchell now — back at home?"

"No, ma'am. She's still not feeling very secure — the idea that Stiller might make bail or get sprung somehow and come back at her again has her pretty well spooked. She stayed at the apartment again last night, and even wanted the sweeper to stay with her again."

Miss Parker nodded. "If I had a cut around the base of my neck from this guy, I'd be spooked too, Sam."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Give her whatever she wants. If it means she wants a personal sweeper for the time being, assign her somebody."

"I intended to, Miss Parker."

Miss Parker smiled. "I do enjoy having a Chief of Security that thinks like I do."

"Have a good day, Miss Parker," Sam chuckled. "I'll let you know when everything's in place for this Ziegler fellow."

"Thanks."

"There is a Colonel Fox to see you, sir," Captain Jenkins announced promptly at nine in the morning.

"Send him on in," Admiral Samson said and then closed the file that he'd been reading while waiting for the Air Force officer to come to a halt in front of his desk.

Fox stood stiffly at attention and saluted sharply. "Colonel Theodore Fox, reporting as ordered, sir!" he stated formally.

"At ease, Colonel. Sit down," Samson waved at him. "Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

"That would be appreciated, sir," Fox replied, startled.

"Jenkins, another cup of coffee for the Colonel," Samson stated to the Captain still standing at the door waiting to be dismissed.

"Yes, sir." Jenkins disappeared.

"Now," Samson leaned forward with his hands folded on his desk, "I assume you brought all the evidence you have to date with you?"

"Yes, sir." Fox opened the satchel he had placed at his feet and pulled a cassette player, a videotape cassette and several file folders from it.

"And start from the beginning," Samson suggested. "Becca told me as much as she remembered of your tale, and it sounded a little convoluted to me."

"Yes, sir. It IS convoluted, sir," Fox started, then paused as the Captain re-entered the inner office and put a steaming cup of coffee in front of him. "Thank you," he nodded at the man.

"That will be all, Jenkins," Samson told his secretary.

"Yes, sir." The Captain saluted and spun on his heel and left the room, pulling the door firmly closed behind him.

"As you were saying…"

Fox proceeded to tell his story once more, starting from the call he'd received from the Centre administrator and ending with the call he'd received the night before, detailing the arrest of Stiller. He'd played the audiocassette of all three taped phone calls to Doctor Mitchell and handed over a copy of the folder he'd gotten from Tyler just the day before that detailed all the projects the Centre had returned to the Pentagon.

"So let me get this straight," the aging Admiral said finally, rising from his seat and stepping over to the window of his office, puffing thoughtfully on a cigar, "aside from this Stiller fellow, we have the names of three military men and a Senator, acquired either by phone tap or as claimed by the Centre as inquiring after these canceled projects. Correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"And we have your testimony that archived materials are missing from the secured facility, and anecdotal evidence claiming that the whole she-bang has been removed."

"Yes, sir."

"I would like you and your assistant to take another trip to the secured archive and check the contents of the boxes supposedly from the Centre against the list of projects in this folder." The dark face glanced up at him sharply. "I'm assuming you kept a copy of this list?"

"Yes, sir."

The Admiral sat back down behind his desk and turned to his computer. After fiddling with it for a while, he grumbled, "Damned technology…" and then began typing. He stopped typing and hit a button, and immediately his printer began to whirl. "This will authorize you as my deputy and give you permission to allocate resources to place surveillance on General Curtis, Colonel Harris and Captain Lewis, complete with phone taps. Get what you need and get it in place as soon as possible." He handed the completed document across the desk to Fox.

"What about Stiller, sir? Do we leave him in civilian custody, or request that JAG take over jurisdiction?"

"The woman he was trying to get to — is she safe?"

Fox nodded. "The Centre has her in a secured location with her phone calls forwarded."

"Then let's see what our friends will do when they find out he's in jail. I'm betting they'll cut him loose and hang him out to dry, but I wouldn't bet money on it. If they DO make an effort to spring him, we'll have another paper trail to follow up with — not to mention HIM to follow as well."

"Yes, sir. I'll call the Centre and let them know of our intentions."

Samson raised a finger. "You report to me now, Colonel — not your former C.O. Until we've got a bead on just exactly who all is involved, nobody else is to know about this. You get your ass in a sling, I'll bail you out. But we keep this as low-key as possible."

"What about my friend at JAG, sir?"

"Let me handle bringing JAG into things, Colonel."

"Yes, sir!"

Samson settled back into his chair and toyed with the file folders in front of him. "I wonder just what it is about the Centre that these people feel just can't be allowed to disappear…"

"Read the descriptions of the projects, sir," Fox suggested. "It will make you wonder just how that organization managed to stay in business in the first place."

"I intend to," Samson promised the Air Force officer grimly. "Is there anything else we need to discuss right now?"

Fox sprang to his feet immediately. "No, sir!"

"Then you are dismissed, Colonel. And good luck to you."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." Fox saluted, spun smartly on his heel and, with his satchel tightly in hand, left the office.

Samson thought for a long moment before pushing his intercom button. "Jenkins? Get me Admiral Weston over at JAG, will you?" He sat back in his chair comfortably and waited to be informed that his call was read. Better get the lawyers involved right away, he told himself — but get them involved quietly at first…

"Good morning, Grandpa."

"Good morning, ma petite." Sydney smiled up at Deb as she walked through the kitchen door. "You look like you slept well last night."

She shrugged. "I had a nightmare, but I got past it."

Grey eyebrows shot up the forehead. "You got past it?"

Blue eyes met his solidly. "I went and talked to Kevin for a while, and after a while I was able to go back to bed and sleep again."

What was it that Parker had said — that it WAS her life. Sydney knew that if anything else had happened despite his long and earnest talk with Kevin, it would come out in their therapy sessions sooner or later — sooner, if it was bothering her. "Kevin was able to help you?"

"He offered to help me downstairs so I could talk to you, but I didn't want to bother you again." She turned and got herself a bowl from the cupboard for some cereal. "We sat and talked for a while."

He knew she was waiting for him to ask what they'd talked about — there was just the slightest touch of defiance in her tone and stance — so he decided to let the subject rest until or unless it came up again later. "Are you going in to see your father today then?"

Deb blinked down into her bowl on the counter. He WASN'T going to pry? "I was thinking about it," she answered, walking over to the fridge for the milk. "Is this the day you go in for your physical therapy?"

Sydney shook his head and sipped at his coffee. "No, that's tomorrow afternoon." He gazed at her back. "If you want to save gas, you could ride in with us then."

"That's what I was thinking," she admitted, carrying her bowl back over to the table and taking her customary place. "I was also thinking that I might call Janet and Karen and see what they're up to — maybe go visit with them for a while."

He nodded. "That might be a good way to spend your afternoon today," he agreed. "You haven't seen them for a while."

"I know." She took a couple of bites of her cereal, aware that her grandfather seemed unusually comfortable with long silences between them. "Are you mad at me?"

Sydney blinked. "What possible reason would I have to be mad at you, Deb?"

"Because I went into Kevin's room last night…"

"Oh, that." He put his coffee cup on the table. "Did anything happen while you were there that you think I would disapprove of?"

"No…"

"Then don't worry about it." He watched her eat thoughtfully for a while. "I'm not trying to put a crimp in your social life, ma petite — nor am I trying to keep you from spending time with Kevin."

"I know…" She thought for a while. "Miss Parker talked to me."

"I know. I asked her to," he told her.

"When…" She stopped, thought about it for a while, then looked up again. "When will I know I'm getting better?"

"When you don't have to ask the question," Sydney told her gently. "When you start sleeping through the night without the nightmares — and suddenly, one day, you realize that you haven't had one for a while." He picked up his coffee again. "Incidentally, which nightmare was it last night?"

"The one where he found me here…" she said softly.

He nodded. "You're still not feeling entirely safe here. That's understandable."

"But you and Kevin and Mr. Ikeda are here…"

"This is where it all started," he reminded her gently. "When you have your home broken into, it inevitably causes a feeling of violation because that wonderful sense that you're safe behind your own closed doors has been taken away." He looked at her gently. "Even I have a hard time occasionally with that now. After all, it was MY home from which you were stolen, you know — and I was here when it happened and was unable to prevent it. And Miss Parker feels much the same about her place now too."

"Does it go away — this feeling of being insecure?"

"Eventually," he replied, "but like much of this whole thing, it will take time."

"Time..." She said the word as if it were something disgusting and then put her spoon down and sagged her chin into the palm of her hand. "Everything takes time, you say, and yet all I seem to have is time and nothing to fill it with. What am I going to do with myself, Grandpa? I can't just sit around the house all day — you and Kevin have all that stuff to go through. When I just sit around, all I do is stew and fuss about… that. I need something to DO. I HAVE to start moving on with my life."

Sydney nodded sympathetically. "I can appreciate that, Deb. What about maybe asking Mrs. Macy at the library if you could do some volunteer work in the afternoons? You KNOW she always needs help filing books away again — and frankly that would be a lot easier on you right now than dealing with the public working a counter at Oggie's."

Deb brightened up immediately. Why hadn't SHE thought about that? "You're right!" she started smiling again. "I'd forgotten how much fun I used to have doing that. And so what if there's no paycheck — at least I'd be doing something other than just sitting around the house getting in everybody's way…"

"Now Deb, you're not getting in everybody's way," Sydney chided her gently. "No tearing yourself down, remember?"

She looked contrite. "Yes, sir," she said and then brightened. "Maybe I can go over after lunch?"

"Go where?" Kevin asked as he finally stumbled into the kitchen in search of the coffeepot and some liquid wakefulness.

"Deb's discovered something to occupy her time at last," Sydney told his sleepy protégé. "Filing books at the library. It's a quiet place and, like she said, it would give her something to do. And good morning to you, sleepy-head."

"Good morning." Kevin rubbed his face with his hand and then poured himself some coffee. "Sounds like a good idea."

Sydney watched the two of them as Kevin took a seat next to Deb and brushed his hand against hers almost as if by accident. Their eyes met, and Sydney knew immediately that something HAD happened the night before — there was a much more evident mutual fondness in their expression. And then it was as if it had never happened — Kevin dropped his gaze to his coffee cup and then raised it to his mentor. "We get into a new box today," he announced tiredly. "Here's to more eyestrain."

"Thrills," the psychiatrist shook his head absently, his mind far from contemplating the possible contents of this new box of old data.

He wouldn't bring his observation of their behavior to his therapy session with Deb this morning, but rather he would wait and watch to see just where this new connection between the two seemed to be leading. At least Kevin seemed to be taking more of a lead in the relationship now — Sydney smiled at the way Deb looked as if she wished he'd pay her just a LITTLE more attention than he was at the moment. Good! His talk with his protégé seemed to have borne the kind of fruit he was hoping for — and he could breathe a sigh of relief.

For now, at any rate...

Phil Baldwin closed his office door quietly and carried the folder he'd paid handsomely to acquire over to his desk where he could study its contents in comfort. His contact in the IRS hadn't been thrilled at the assignment he'd given her this time, but she had come through for him in record time. The list of current employees and officers of the corporation known as The Centre was in his hands, along with a more detailed summary of each of the key corporate personnel.

Chairman: Miss Melissa Parker, he read. Nothing out of the ordinary here – her father had been the Chairman at the Centre before he had allegedly committed suicide. Her tax history was spotless. Evidently someone had tried once before to get something on her, because there was an investigator's report detailing her rather wild ways while younger, a single brush with the law about eight years ago – and then nothing.

Executive Assistant: Cody Tyler. Tyler was a colorful character, having held down any number of different jobs in his short working life before ending up as a morgue assistant at the Centre at the time of the bombing… Morgue Assistant? Since when does a research and development think tank need an on-site morgue? Baldwin noted down the information and moved on.

Chief of Security: Sam Atlee. Now here was some interesting information – all of it ultimately useless due to its age. Sam had run with a very rough crowd in his youth, and had been looking at prison time for strong-arming shop owners in Brooklyn when the Centre had evidently recruited him as part of their short-lived community outreach efforts. Since then, he had lived quietly and without any problem at all in Blue Cove – without even a parking ticket to his name.

Chief of Technology: Lazlo Broots. Baldwin looked at a picture of the man and grimaced. This was the quintessential computer geek – too flighty and meek-hearted to have anything in his background worth investigating. Divorced, father of a single daughter. Nope. There was nothing worth digging into here.

Baldwin leafed through the remaining pages – Head of Bio-Chemistry, Head of Psychogenics – and closed the folder with the description of the corporate officers in disgust. For a firm that had spent the better part of the last thirty years at the literal beck and call of the super-patriots, there was very little to hold over the heads of the current administration. Obviously, the house cleaning that had just taken place at the Centre had been very thorough.

Well, he reasoned, maybe they haven't had the opportunity to get rid of Lyle's Chinese girls after all. He ran his finger down the long list of clerical staff until, suddenly, he found them: Ping Xing-Li and Hsu Mei-Chiang. Both women were still on the payroll and – surprise, surprise – had just received healthy pay hikes within the last week. Curious, he ran his finger across so that he could see their current positions, and his eyes widened even further. Both women were in positions that would allow them access to privileged information: the Hsu woman was the executive secretary to the Chairman herself, the Ping woman executive secretary to the Executive Assistant to the Chairman.

It wasn't much, but it seemed that it was all they had to go on. Baldwin reached out for his personal phone book and looked up the name and number of a friendly representative for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. If the Centre hadn't taken care of these women's status as yet, then he finally had something tangible. He knew for a fact that Lyle didn't like to register his Chinese women properly so that they wouldn't be missed when he decided to indulge his obscene appetites. The disruption of having INS swoop in on the Centre and haul away two such highly-placed employees would be enjoyable to watch – and give Senator Burns a reason to call this Miss Parker and see if she weren't willing to be a little more reasonable.

If not, then… Well… The Centre had a reputation – one that obviously had outlived the administration that had earned it. There was plenty in the group's file about activities the Centre had undertaken on their behalf in years past that could be hauled out and handed over to investigative committees that could threaten the very continued existence of the Centre.

The little accountant smiled while he waited for the phone to be picked up at INS and as an afterthought brought up the Centre website. Sometimes in the shadows WAS the seat of power! He relayed his anonymous tip to the secretary of his friend, then hung up and began to type carefully. There HAD to be a backdoor into the server — and from there into the Centre mainframe. He'd done this all too often…

"Remember, this is your one call – make it count," the Blue Cove police office told Stiller as if he were an idiot.

"If you don't mind," Stiller said, staring at the policeman until the man moved far enough down the wall that he couldn't be said to be blatantly listening in on the conversation. Stiller dialed a number from memory.

"General Curtis' office," came the quick and efficient response.

"This is Colonel Stiller – I need to speak to the General immediately."

"Yes, sir," the major who was Curtis' secretary and assistant answered and put Stiller on hold briefly.

"I told you never to call me here!" Curtis boomed into the telephone only moments later.

"I know, but I'm in a bit of a bind," Stiller explained, deliberately not paying attention to his superior's ire. "The doctor's house last night was a set-up, and I got arrested when I went to see about convincing her to work with us one last time."

"You did WHAT?"

"Now I'm stuck in this little hick town's jail – and I want out of here before some magistrate decides to hold me over for trial!"

Curtis thought for a moment. "These Centre people are smarter and more savvy than we gave them credit for – and that being the case, I'll bet they're watching to see if anybody comes and tries to spring you or make your bail."

"General, I can't be here," Stiller warned him. "You need me to get Veracity back on-track."

"Your landing yourself in the hoosegow in the process isn't very confidence-inspiring, Danny. You were supposed to scare the lady – intimidate the snot out of her – not break into her house and get yourself caught."

"General…"

"I'll have to get back with you," Curtis told the angry officer curtly. "I'm going to have to run this past the committee – and you'll have to make due with whatever it is that they decide."

"You can't just leave me here like this…" Stiller was outraged. "I'm an officer in the United States Air Force, for heaven's sake. At the very least, I deserve to be taken to a military lock-up."

Curtis knew the man had a point, but his getting himself caught put the whole operation of getting projects restarted into serious jeopardy. "I'll do what I can for you, Danny, but you're going to have to hang tight for a while. Don't talk to ANYBODY – I'll have one of my men come by and visit you within a day or so to let you know what the committee decides."

"General!!"

"Good luck, Danny." Curtis cut off the howl of dismay from the other end and hung the telephone up quickly.

This was a helluva note. So much of their current emphasis was wrapped up in getting Veracity and Black Hole finished and usable in the near future – before the President started doing anything more overt in certain parts of the Middle East and Asia.

He shifted in his chair and pulled his wallet out of his pocket and then dug behind identification cards and credit cards for the business card with telephone numbers written on the back. He picked up the telephone and dialed the top number on that card and then waited.

"Harry? It's Doug. We have a problem."

Becca Ashland kicked her shoes off and stretched out her legs on the comfortable couch in her office, the official Senate directory in hand. She opened it to the "B" section and quickly skimmed the biography of Harold Burns, Senator from Florida. The more she read, the more she frowned – Burns. Where had she heard that name before? She rose and padded out her office door. "Jenny? Take a peek in the files for me and see if we have anything on Harold Burns and bring it into the office if we do?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She settled back on the couch and resumed her study of the directory listing. So Burns was on the Senate Armed Services Committee – well, that made sense, if he were a part of some quiet third-column patriot effort within the military itself. How much better to know of an investigation BEFORE it went anywhere than to be on the Committee that instigated such things nine times out of ten? He was also on the Senate Appropriations Committee – again, logical considering the kinds of projects that Colonel Fox had been speaking of the day before would have needed an immense amount of running capitol to keep financed.

A thought occurred, and she checked. The only two Senators in common for both Committees were Harold Burns and a George Canfield from Montana. Becca's eyes narrowed. Canfield had been an outspoken opponent of hers on environmental issues dealing with exploring for vital resources within some of the national forests in his state. She had expected him to side with her on protecting the environment – but evidently he had decided that the state needed the extra jobs and influx of money that such exploration and subsequent development might have meant. She had suspected that he had taken the stand as a favor to lobbyists who had helped him get elected – not that such a think were illegal. However, when nearly the majority of his constituents opposed such a move, to push on with his extreme view had stood out at unreasonable and highly questionable.

"Here you are, ma'am," the secretary said after knocking softly and coming into the office with a folder. Ashland opened the folder and immediately remembered why the name 'Burns' had stuck in her mind. An environmentalist for Greenpeace had been protesting the actions of a manufacturing firm owned by Burns' brother had disappeared and later been found floating facedown in the swamp half-eaten by alligators. Burns had tried to use his DC influence to have the incident ruled as an accident – Dade County officials, however, had perversely left the case open as a possible homicide.

She rose again and went over to her desk to punch up the voting history of both men in the recent roll calls and frowned. Both men had voted to deny an investigation into allegations of human rights violations within the Guantanamo prison where the remaining Taliban prisoners from Afghanistan were still being held. Both men had VISITED the prison with military dignitaries twice within the last year – during a time frame that coincided with some of the alleged human rights violations.

"Ma'am?" her secretary popped her head through the door. "Admiral Samson is on line one for you."

"Thanks, Jenny." Ashland rose to her feet and padded over to her desk. "Gregory. What's new?"

"I gave your Colonel Fox everything he wanted," the gruff voice told her. "And I told Admiral Weston at JAG what we're looking into, and he did a little checking for himself. Seems as if our three military men have all had issues with authority and official policy for quite a while."

"Looks like our Senator has too," she answered. "I'm putting together a list of associates of our Senator for my FBI associate to investigate very quietly – to see if anything pans."

"We're going to want to keep this one close to the vest, Becca," Samson warned his friend. "From what Fox told me happened to that Centre scientist, we may find that we're dealing with dangerous, violent men."

"I'm fairly certain we are, Greg," she replied. "And I'm not sure that we're going to be wanting to confer about this over open phone lines for much longer."

"Getting paranoid on me in your old age, sweetheart?" Samson's voice held a note of humor.

"Only an old warhorse like you would be too stubborn to get paranoid on this one," she retorted with a smile. "Humor me, willya?"

"Tell you what," Samson said after thinking for a while. "There's a bar on 8th – the Grey Goose. I like to stop there for drinks after work on the way home. If you have anything for me, be there when I get there at six-thirty. How's that?"

"Alright," Ashland said, nodding. "I'll be making a habit of stopping for a glass of wine at the Georgetown Inn at about seven in the evening from now on. If you need me, come there at seven-fifteen after waiting at the Grey Goose for me." She chuckled. "I know it's crazy, but I feel like a damned spy."

"Let's just hope that we're being over-cautious," Samson said soberly.

"Doctor Jarod? There's a Mr. Rizzo from Child Protective Services on the line for you," Cindy announced as Jarod led his latest client back to her mother in the waiting room.

"I'll take it in my office," Jarod announced, then with a wave at the child and her mother, retreated to his office. "Let me take this call first," he told Charles Downing, the young psychiatrist who would be replacing him eventually, "and then we'll consult on the next case."

"Sure thing." Charles rose to his feet and gave Jarod the privacy he needed.

Jarod sat down at his desk and picked up the phone. "Mr. Rizzo. What can I do for you?"

"Actually, this is a case of me doing something for you, Doctor," Rizzo's voice came across the line strongly and with an upbeat tone. "There have been some changes in the family court schedule, and I have convinced the judge in your case to move your hearing up to Thursday."

"That's wonderful!" Jarod exploded with excitement. "How on earth…"

"Don't get too excited yet. The judge in your case has taken note of the accelerated pace at which your petition has made it through the system and expressed some concerns. He wants to interview both you and Ginger, separately and together, in chambers before going into the full hearing. Essentially that means that you'll both need to be at the courthouse for most of the morning. Is that going to be a problem?"

"It won't be once I speak to my receptionist," Jarod told the worker with a huge smile on his face. "This is wonderful news!"

"I'll call up the clerk and make sure that you have the allotted time scheduled with the judge then," Rizzo said. "How's the little girl?"

"Starting to talk again," Jarod announced with pride. "She isn't always clear in what she's saying, but it's getting better everyday."

"That's wonderful!" Rizzo thought back one more time to the semi-catatonic child that he'd handed over to this man not all that long ago and was amazed at the progress that she'd made once she'd been handed over to someone willing to give her the love and care that she deserved. "Before you leave California after the adoption is finalized, will you do me a favor and bring her by the office?"

"Is that Sanchez woman still working for you?" Jarod asked cautiously.

"Actually, no… She didn't receive a very good probationary report from me as the result of our visit with you, and her application for a full position with us was denied." Rizzo didn't sound too sorry about the news. "And the reason I'm asking is that there were a couple of other gals here in the office that were VERY upset at Ginger's condition when she was brought in the last time – I'd like them to see that she's getting better at last."

"I'll see if I can talk Ginger into it," Jarod promised. "I'll let you know though."

"I appreciate it, Doctor. Hopefully I'll see you toward the end of the week."

"Thanks again." Jarod hung up the phone and walked out of his office with a whoop of victory.

"Doctor Jarod!" Cindy grinned at him when he swooped over the desk and gave her an unexpected hug that set the beads in her hair clicking together. "What's this for?"

"They've moved my court date up — THIS Thursday! Sprite's almost mine at last!"

"That's wonderful, Doctor Jarod, but…" Cindy looked at him carefully. "I've never heard of an adoption going through THIS fast before. My aunt adopted a little boy about ten years ago, and it took over eight months for all the paperwork to go through and to get on the court calendar. You've only been at this a few weeks…"

Jarod calmed down a little. "I know, Cindy. I think my fiancée called in a few favors and cut through most of the red tape for me. And now it seems this Rizzo with CPS has done his own share of tape snipping."

"Well," she said with her hand on her hip in a jaunty pose as she sat behind the counter, "it couldn't happen for a nicer little girl." Then she sobered again. "That means you'll be leaving us soon, doesn't it?"

He nodded. "Guess so." He bent and gave her another, gentler hug. "I'll miss you, you know…"

Cindy smiled but then began to fuss in embarrassment. "Hush now, Doctor Jarod. You know you want to get back to that pretty lady and boy of yours — I've seen how you moon over that picture on your desk every once in a while."

Jarod began to chuckle. "You know, if you ever decide you want out of California, I could use someone like you back in Delaware…"

"And leave Doctor Ethan alone?" Her wide, dark face was a portrait of horror. "I don't think so. And I won't tell him that you tried to seduce me away from him either."

Now Jarod did let loose a laugh. "You're one in a million, Cindy. I AM going to miss you!"

"I'll miss you too, Doctor Jarod — but it'll be OK, because I'll know you'll be with your pretty lady and boy. You'll bring your little girl in to say goodbye before you go, though, won't you?"

"You bet." Jarod headed back to his office, pausing long enough to gesture at the very tall and thin man who would be taking his place to follow him. Saying goodbye to the life he'd built here for himself and his family wouldn't be easy. But what waited for him on the other side of the continent would more than make up for it — at last, a family of his own, with a wife and children. It was the one thing that he'd never been able to find here, and he knew why: Missy. He'd never ever fallen OUT of love with her — and now he didn't need to.

Sam stepped through the door of Miss Parker's outer office and smiled at Mei-Chiang. "Are you almost ready to go?" he asked, working desperately to keep the excitement out of his voice.

"Almost," she put a finger up to restrain him a little while she reshuffled papers on her desk and then pushed the intercom button. "Miss Parker, I'm almost off for the day. Is there anything else you needed?"

Instead of merely answering the intercom, Miss Parker came quickly through the door. "I meant to give you this after I saw the lawyer this morning — and I think you'll need it where you're going." She handed the young Chinese woman a wad of papers, on the top of which was a green identification card from INS. "This makes you a completely legal resident."

Mei-Chiang's eyes shone. "Thank you, Miss Parker. I don't know what to say…"

"Consider it an early wedding present," Miss Parker told her with a gentle smile and then a wink up into the eye of her Security Chief. "Now, get out of here before the court closes in Dover and you have to drive in all over again tomorrow." She looked up at Sam one last time as he waited for Mei-Chiang to retrieve her purse. "Everything set in Berlin?"

"Yup," he answered with his eye still on his bride-to-be, then remembering and looking at his boss to find her smirking at his distractedness. "As of an hour ago, we have him completely covered there, and everything's set for when he gets back tomorrow."

"Good." She nodded to the both of them. "I'll see you both in the morning."

"Good night, Miss Parker," Mei-Chiang said as Sam captured her hand and slipped it into the bend of his elbow. "And thank you again."

"You're very welcome," she replied and watched Sam carefully usher Mei-Chiang out of the office with a satisfied smile. It was clear that the man was absolutely besotted with her and would do just about anything in the world for her. Suddenly missing Jarod very much, she headed back to her office — she'd have to call him tonight, as soon as she could be sure she wasn't interrupting him at work. She sat down at her desk and held out her left hand and watched the play of the light in the diamond that Jarod had given her. Absently she reached out her hand for the telephone when it rang. "Yes… Parker."

"Miss Parker," Broots' voice sounded in her ear.

"Broots!" Her face immediately broke into a delighted smile. "It's been a while since I've talked to you. How are you doing?"

"Getting ready to be out of this damned cast," the technician growled impatiently. "But I wasn't just calling to yak. I was working on some security routines this afternoon and saw something rather peculiar over our Internet connections."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Our website recorded a hit from a terminal in West Virginia — somewhere on the Naval base there — and the person on the other end was trying to find a back door into our mainframe." Broots paused for effect. "Needless to say, he didn't get very far."

"A military hacker?" Parker leaned back in her chair in surprise.

"He did give my new encryption schemes a good run for their money — but they held." Her technician's voice was clearly impressed. "This guy was GOOD — not as good as Jarod used to be, but…"

"No idea of an actually identity?"

"No, of course not," Broots shook his head. "All I got was an IP address that traced back to a router at Norfolk — a physical firewall. I just thought I'd give you a heads-up — before I put a few more technicians on the lookout for future incursions."

"Thanks," she said sincerely. "Thank God you work for us!"

Broots chuckled. "How's my little girl doing?"

"Better," Miss Parker said, grateful to be able to relate some good news to the bedridden man. "She's evidently conquered a couple of her demons AND her fear of Kevin. I have a feeling you'd better get used to seeing him around from now on."

"Oh?" Broots sounded concerned. "Should I be worried?"

"Syd and I have done what we can to hopefully reduce your worry down to a dull ache," she told him frankly. "Syd talked to Kevin, I talked to Deb."

"And…" Clearly he wanted to hear more. "Damn it, Miss Parker…"

"Hang on, Scooby, I'll tell you everything, just keep your panties on. Deb reached a crisis point the other day, having a flashback while she was at your place watering the back yard after arguing with Syd. In the end, Sydney had to go rescue her…"

"You said she was getting better…" Broots cried accusingly.

"It was the kind of break she needed, Broots. She remembered everything that happened in California — and she hadn't before — and Kevin was the one who kept her calm on the phone until Sydney got to her. Syd says she's finally reconciling herself to not being the one at fault for what happened…"

"She blamed herself?" The father was aghast.

Miss Parker nodded. "That happens, Broots. But she also found out that Kevin wasn't going to hurt her anymore — and the two of them have been spending some time together."

"And you and Sydney felt that you had to talk to them…"

"Sydney said that they spent that thunderstorm yesterday up in the tree house necking."

"They did WHAT?"

She couldn't restrain her chuckles anymore. "Broots! Calm down! She's twenty-one years old, and he's an adult too. And like I said, I talked to her — reminded her that she still has a lot of ground to cover before she wants to get TOO involved with a man."

Broots growled, "If he touches her, I'll…"

"Trust me, Broots, if he does touch her, it won't be because she didn't want it," she interrupted. "What did you think would happen when she went off to Amherst like she was going to before everything happened, huh?"

"I don't have to like it…" he grumbled back.

"They're good together, Broots — you know that. She could do a whole lot worse."

"Well…" He had to admit, if Miss Parker was actually giving HER approval, then maybe things weren't quite as bad as he thought. "What does Syd say?"

"Sydney and I agree," she told him honestly, "both that they're good together and that all they need to do is be careful."

"If you're sure…"

"No wonder you're bald," she teased him gently. "God help me if I let Jarod get this bad with Ginger when she gets older…"

"Ginger?" Now her friend was thoroughly confused. "Who's that?"

Miss Parker looked down at her left hand again and then at the picture of herself and Jarod and their family that sat on her desk. She touched the glass over the face of her little girl. "Do you have a minute to talk?"

"Right now, all I have IS time, Miss Parker," he reminded her. "And from the sounds of it, I haven't heard all the news from California yet, have I?"

"Nope," she said softly. "Do you mind if I bend your ear a bit?"

"Do I ever?"

She smiled softly. In the years since Jarod vanished, Sydney, Broots and Sam had become more than just colleagues and a friends — they'd been trusted confidantes and ultimately much, much more. In Sydney, she'd found a father she could love and respect and who loved her back unconditionally and absolutely. In Sam, she'd found a protective big brother, a little taciturn at times but with a hidden sense of humor that could crack her up like no other. In Broots, she'd found the little brother she could tease mercilessly one moment and depend on completely in the next to help her understand things and who had finally moved beyond the crush he'd had on her. These three men WERE her family — for years, the only people she'd had to lean on and trust. And they were more her family than those who had actually been her flesh and blood had ever thought of being.

She had long since realized how much she had missed having Broots beside her to help her think through the events of her life since the bombing. She'd had Sydney and Sam —and Jarod, to a greater or lesser extent — but Broots' absence had been like a gaping hole in her life that ached whenever she allowed herself to think about it. But with him on the other end of the line now, she suddenly didn't feel quite so lonely as she had just a few minutes earlier. "Thanks," she told him even more softly. "I've missed you. Nobody cringes or jumps when I bark half as well as you do…"

His voice softened as well. "Talk to me, Parker. Who's Ginger? What else is going on that I don't know about."

And she leaned back in her chair, cradling the receiver to her ear, and told him — everything.

Tyler walked out of his office with his brief case and paused by his secretary's desk. "I would have thought you'd be on your way home by now," he said in surprise.

Xing-Li shrugged. "I still have a few things to finish up with here, and then I'll go…"

"Come on," Tyler shook his head and held out his hand. "It can wait until morning. You've more than earned your keep for the day. Call it quits"

She looked up into her boss' eyes and saw that he thought he was doing her a favor and then nodded reluctantly. "Yes, sir," she agreed softly and pulled open the bottom drawer of her desk to retrieve her purse.

"You're looking a little glum," Tyler commented as he watched her slow and sure movements. "Anything wrong?"

"No, sir," she looked up at him in surprise. "Everything is well, thank you."

"Then why no smile of relief that another day at the salt mine is finished?"

She looked away and then carefully locked her desk. "It's nothing, sir."

"Is it something I did? Or something I didn't do?" Tyler pried very carefully and held open the annex door out into the evening air.

"No, sir, of course not!"

"Then what?"

She glanced up into his face and saw that he wasn't just going to drop the subject. "It's selfish, really," she offered vaguely. "I know better."

"Than what? You're not making any sense…"

"Xing-Li!" a voice called from the direction of the construction site. The pair turned and saw a white-coated figure raise a hand and then head in their direction.

"Lauren…" Tyler heard his secretary breathe almost in relief.

Xing-Li was right. Lauren Mitchell walked briskly across the gravel and then the grass to get to them. "I'm glad I saw you," she told the Chinese woman. "I forgot to ask you last night if you'd like to have dinner with me — especially now that you're without a roommate."

"I'd like that," Xing-Li smiled, and suddenly Tyler understood what was going on. Miss Parker had told him about the sudden engagement of her Chief of Security — obviously the lady in question was now living with Sam, leaving Xing-Li alone in that dismal little apartment building.

"Do you ladies need a lift?" He decided that he could at least offer the two of them a ride back to the building.

"I have my car with me today, Mr. Tyler, but thank you for the offer," Doctor Mitchell smiled at the young Texan. Oh, if he was just a few years older, she told herself with a deep breath of appreciation. The Centre's Executive Assistant was definitely easy on the eyes.

Tyler watched the two walk away chatting easily with a slight feeling of loss. He'd promised himself that he would be trying to draw Xing-Li out of the shy shell she was hiding herself in. He had hoped to at least get to know her a little better that evening — their quick exchange on the way out of the annex had been the longest private conversation he'd had with her to date. She was pretty, prettier even than Mei-Chiang, and he was intrigued by her gentle manner. Another time, perhaps — especially now that he knew that she was feeling lonesome during her off-hours.

He dug in his pocket for his keys and absently wondered how his dating his secretary would fly with Miss Parker.

Sydney put the platter with the leftover roast from the night before back in the fridge for supper sandwiches and then moved carefully through the house until he was standing in the arch of the living room. Kevin was standing by the picture window, looking out — waiting for Deb, he knew. "She's still not home yet?" he asked his protégé gently.

Kevin shook his head and sighed.

"She'll be back soon, my boy," Sydney soothed, knowing nothing he could say would help. "She's off with her girlfriends for the afternoon."

"I know," he sighed again. "It's just that…" He moved around and then sat down on the couch so that he was facing his mentor. "Why is it that when I think of her, I get all shaky inside?"

"That's the first rush of attraction, Kevin. Some people call it a 'crush' — probably because of the way it makes us feel inside. Sometimes that shaky feeling lasts a lifetime and becomes a part of a deep and abiding love. Sometimes it doesn't last much more than a few days or a week, until another pretty face catches our eye."

"How do you tell when it's going to be one rather than the other?"

Sydney moved into the room and settled himself into one of the easy chairs that he found he could climb out of easiest. "There's no way to tell at the beginning which way things are going to go." He watched the emotions running amok and unchecked across Kevin's face. "This is different than what you felt about her when you first met her, isn't it"

Again the young Pretender nodded. "I'm having trouble concentrating today. If I'm not careful, I catch myself daydreaming about being with her."

"I'm not surprised," Sydney told him gently. "Your time in the tree house has probably got your libido nicely churned up."

"She came to my room last night," Kevin confessed with a touch of chagrin.

"I know — she told me," his mentor informed him with a smile, then leaned forward to take the young man off the hook as quickly and effectively as possible. "I'll tell you what I told her: if you didn't do anything that you think I would have disapproved of, don't worry about it."

"Am I in love with her?"

Sydney blinked. "If you're asking if there's such a thing as love at first sight, I can't say that there isn't — but you have to realize that it is very rare…"

"It isn't that. It's that… All I think about is her — the way she feels, the way she smells…" He ducked his head and blushed. "How I felt when I was kissing her…" He looked up again. "And how I don't want to have to share her, or know that she's with anybody else."

"That's jealousy, and that isn't such a great idea," Sydney warned. "Deb has many friends — some of them other young men like you, and some of them have known her much longer than you have. You can't expect her to forget people from her past, Kevin."

"I know. But I keep thinking of my promise to Tyler."

Sydney settled back in the chair. "Uh-huh. I was wondering when that was going to come up again." He steepled his fingers under his nose. "What are you going to do about that promise?"

"I don't know." Kevin sounded very torn. "How can I be just a friend when Deb reaches out to me in… that way… when Tyler isn't around? What am I supposed to do, turn away?"

"Don't you think that depends on HOW you respond when Deb reaches out to you?" Sydney asked gently. "For example, last night, when she was in your room, did you deliberately try to kiss her or embrace her?"

"No!" Kevin was aghast. "After our talk…"

"Then you DID keep your promise to Tyler, didn't you?" Sydney reminded him.

"What about in the tree house?"

"Was that her idea, or yours?"

"Hers," Kevin admitted. "But I went along with it…"

"Give yourself room to be human, Kevin. Having a pretty young lady kiss you out of the clear blue sky would be hard to resist for any man." Sydney's smile was a companionable one.

"It was storming…"

"You know what I mean," the psychiatrist grumbled good-naturedly, cursing what was apparently a common Pretender trait of taking words literally at the wrong time. "The next question will be what you will do if Deb decides she wants to spend time with Tyler."

"She said she loved me," Kevin complained very softly.

Sydney nodded. THAT was what had happened last night that he'd sensed that morning. "I thought something had happened. You two seemed just a little more in tune this morning."

"If she loves me, would she spend time with Tyler?" Kevin insisted.

"Perhaps, if she sees him as nothing but a friend," the older man answered, knowing the answer would be an uncomfortable one for his protégé. "Then again, what about that girl in the park — the one who you say called you a geek…"

"And a prude…" Kevin added distractedly.

"You saw her again?"

"A couple of days ago."

"How do you think Deb would feel if you spent some time in the park with her — this girl who calls you names?"

"But it wouldn't be…"

"Think of it from Deb's perspective — and see whether there is any substantive difference between that and any time she might decide to spend with Tyler as another friend like her girlfriends today." Sydney watched as the young Pretender slouched on the couch as he spun the scenarios through his head quickly. "If you truly do love her, Kevin, you won't stand in the way of her continuing to be friends with whomever she pleases — and if she truly loves you, she won't stand in your way either. Jealousy is a love-killer because, in the end, we don't OWN those we love. They aren't possessions — love can only be given freely, not coerced."

Kevin's clear blue eyes had listened closely to his mentor's words. Now he wanted to know — the man spoke as if from experience. "Have you ever been in love, Sydney?"

"Oh, yes." Sydney's face grew soft as he thought of Michelle as he'd last seen her on a weekend visit to Albany. "Yes, I have."

Something about the way his mentor replied made Kevin stop. "ARE you in love with someone?" he rephrased his question.

Sydney looked his protégé directly in the eye. "Yes, I am. I have been for a very long time."

"Where is she? Have I met her?"

"No, you don't know her. She lives in New York, not far from our son, who is a university professor up there."

"Are you married to her?"

"No."

The answer astonished the young Pretender — didn't his mentor just say that they had a child together? "Why? Why isn't she here, with you? Doesn't she love you?"

"It's complicated," the older man hedged. "We were thinking about marriage when she left me, pregnant with a son I never knew about. I didn't find her again for many years — until long after our son was grown — and by then she had married another. He's now dead… but she still grieves for him. She loves me, yes, but it is more of a memory than a living love. We have been apart too long." He fell silent, and Kevin knew that he had pried into his mentor's life as far as he wanted to.

"I love Deb," Kevin announced with care. "I'm pretty sure of it. And she says she loves me — and I believe her."

"I hope it all works out well for you, then," Sydney said, then groaned as he used the arm of the easy chair and his crutches to drag him to his feet again. "I think I'm going to head back into the den until Deb gets home. Call me when you two are ready to eat, and I'll finish getting the meal out."

Sydney hobbled back toward the den, where he could indulge in thoughts of Michelle without having to answer questions to which he really didn't know the answers. Maybe he'd call her that evening — it had been a while since he'd heard her voice.

Too long.

Feedback, please:


	13. Not A Good Day

Resolutions – 13

Not a Good Day

by MMB

Xing-Li put down her purse and looked down at the center of her desk and a slow smile began to spread across her round face. The pile of papers looked very official, and in the middle on the very top was a green card the likes of which she thought she would never see. Miss Parker had come through on her promise, and she was now a legal resident — and within her rights to be working. She picked up the card and sighed with relief, then slipped it into her wallet before putting her purse away in preparation to start the day.

"Ah," Tyler said as he came into the outer office, "you saw what Miss Parker left for you this morning, I take it?"

"Yes, sir," she smiled up at him widely. "I don't know how to thank her…"

"Don't worry about it," he assured her. "If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll more than earn it." He leaned on her desk casually. "How was your dinner last night?"

"Very interesting. I know so little about American food — have you had a dish called 'casserole' before?"

"Often," he chuckled. "My mom used to throw one of those together at least once a week." He rose. "How does my day look today?"

The tiny woman seated herself confidently behind her desk and reached for the calendar on which she kept his appointments now. "You see a representative for Bristol-Meyer a little later this morning, a meeting with Mr. Atlee and Mr. Harrison at two and then have an appointment with a Dr. Ziegler from the Psychogenics Department at four. You also have three new sweeper candidates to be interviewed at four-thirty." She looked up at him again. "Would you like a cup of coffee first?"

"I'd love one!" he said, then looked up as two very serious-looking and uniformed men came through the outer door. "Yes, can I be of assistance?"

"I don't think so," the taller man said, then looked down at Xing-Li. "You are Ping Xing-Li?"

The Chinese woman glanced at Tyler for support and found him equally dumbfounded. "Y…yes?" she answered shyly.

"I'm Harold Shilling with INS. You'll come with us, please." The second man made a quick grab for her arm and dragged her from her chair.

"Now wait just a damned minute here," Tyler exploded. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"You can come with us too," Shilling said sternly. "There are severe penalties for employing illegal aliens…"

"But Xing-Li isn't illegal," Tyler protested, jerking his arm out of the grasp of the first man. "Show them your card," he told Xing-Li anxiously, then looked up into the face of the second man with fury. "Let her go and get her identification, damn it!"

It took a nod from the Shilling, but then Xing-Li was free to fly to her purse and pull out her wallet. She dug the brand-new green card from its slot and handed it up to the officer, who slipped it into his pocket. "Could be a forgery," the second officer said, reaching for her again.

"Not accompanied with these," Tyler pointed to the rest of the documents sitting on the desk. Shilling looked down with disdain and then did a double take. "Hang on, Jim," he said a little less officiously and leafed through the documents. He looked up at Tyler. "I'm a little confused here," he admitted. "We received an anonymous report of undocumented aliens being worked without adequate pay. The name Ping Xing-Li was one of the names listed — you're telling me…"

"The previous administration of the Centre did suffer from lack of oversight in some of those matters," Tyler hedged carefully, "a matter that the current administration took very seriously and went to work immediately to rectify." He thought for a moment. "My God, what about Mei-Chiang?"

"My other team is bringing the Hsu woman into custody," Shilling told him. He reached for the walkie-talkie on his shoulder. "Shilling to Walker. Check and see if she has a green card — we may be on a snipe hunt here."

"My green card, please," Xing-Li gathered all her courage and put out her hand to the tall American. He stared at her for a moment, then reached into his breast pocket and retrieved it for her. "My apologies, ma'am. It seems that there has been a mix-up along the line somewhere…"

"There sure has," Tyler was still furious. "The Centre does not take harassment of its employees by any group or agency lightly. I want a copy of that report on my desk by the end of the day or I will be tendering a serious complaint with your superiors."

"Did I hear you correctly?" a third man came through the office door with a trembling Mei-Chiang in hand. "This one gave me a green card too…"

"What the Hell is going on?" Miss Parker came barreling through the door next and rounded on the official with her secretary in tow. "Just who the hell are you and what are you doing with MY secretary?"

"They're INS," Tyler explained, still fuming. "Evidently SOMEbody sent in an anonymous tip that we were engaging in sweatshop practices with undocumented aliens."

"WHAT?!" She turned to her secretary. "Did you show them your card?" Mei-Chiang just nodded helplessly.

"We've seen a lot of quality forgeries, lady," the officer retorted.

"Yeah, but these AREN'T," Miss Parker hissed. "Our lawyers just went through all of the necessary paperwork mazes to acquire them very legally — and I can have you talk to him about who he talked to at INS to GET those cards."

"Let her go, Jim," Shilling sighed. "We've been had. This one had the rest of the documentation packet — and if she has it, I'll bet the Hsu woman has hers too somewhere."

"Impossible. Our people normally catch this kind of stuff before it gets to us," the man named Jim complained.

"My card." Mei-Chiang put out her hand just as Xing-Li had done earlier.

Miss Parker snatched the card from the fingers of the officer and handed it back to her secretary. "You can rest assured that we will be demanding an investigation into this," she hissed angrily. "Now get out."

"We're sorry to have disturbed your day," Shilling told Xing-Li warily, then nodded at Miss Parker. "Believe me, you're not the only ones who want to know what the hell was going on today."

The Centre quartet watched as the INS people sighed and pushed each other from the office. Miss Parker looked at Tyler. "What the Hell was THAT about?"

"I have an idea," Tyler grumbled, but then caught Xing-Li as she sagged toward her desk. "But I think we have a couple of people here who've had more than enough excitement for a while." He put a solicitous arm around her and helped her back into her seat and then straightened with a hand still on her shoulder.

"I'll call Sam," Miss Parker said immediately, noting that even Mei-Chiang's normally unflappable exterior was pale and her hands were shaking. "Sit down, Mei-Chiang," she instructed, pointing to a chair against the wall, "before you fall down too."

"What would they have done to us?" Xing-Li asked in a frightened tone, very grateful for Tyler's continued hand on her shoulder.

"That would have been a one-way ticket back to the Orient for you both," Tyler growled, then looked up at Miss Parker, who had pulled out her cell phone and was barking at Sam to get his ass to Tyler's office ASAP. "I think we've hit a nerve somewhere," he said knowingly to his boss once she'd disconnected. "Somebody wants us to pay for not cooperating like good little sheep."

"I heard from Broots last night," Miss Parker responded, still keeping an eye on Mei-Chiang. "We had an attempted hacking last night from somewhere on the naval base at Norfolk."

"Yup. We've hit a nerve alright," Tyler nodded, smoothing his hand down Xing-Li's back soothingly. "Just wait until it comes out that Stiller was arrested last night. We can expect more of the same, I'd imagine…"

"But from different directions," Miss Parker speculated. "I have a feeling they're going to be looking for any way to disrupt our day-to-day operations — this was just a first, tentative gesture."

Sam threw the outer office door open and barely stopped. "What happened?" he demanded and headed to Mei-Chiang's side the moment he saw her sitting in her chair looking extremely rattled.

"You take Mei-Chiang down to the cafeteria and help her calm down," Miss Parker directed her friend imperiously, then turned to Tyler. "And you take charge of Xing-Li." Her eyes narrowed. "I have a few phone calls to make — and a few heads to bite off."

"You want to see what?" the duty officer at the secured archives inquired of the two men standing before him.

"You heard me. I want to check the disposition of the files we received from the Centre a few weeks ago," Fox repeated slowly. "I was here a few days ago, if you remember…"

"Yes, sir, I remember you." The duty officer took the numbers of the boxes that Fox was requesting access to this time and ran them against his list of restricted materials. "I'm sorry, sir, but the material you requested is classified."

Fox sighed and pulled his letter from Admiral Samson out of his pocket and handed it to the duty officer. "Don't you think that it's odd that documents that have been here for two weeks only suddenly are made classified — especially when I report that some of the files from the specified boxes are missing?" he asked the sergeant, keeping a close eye on the man's response.

"I don't have anything to do with that," the sergeant shook his head. "I'll have to call upstairs and get this authenticated…"

"No, sergeant, you can call the number on the letter," Fox pointed to the phone number in the letterhead, "and speak to Admiral Samson himself." He waited, and the sergeant raised startled hazel eyes to meet his. "Now, if you don't mind — while I'm right here."

"Ad… Admiral Samson, sir?" the duty officer stammered. "As in…"

"That's right, sergeant. That's about as top-drawer as you can get — and sure as hell outranks your direct superior. Do you need me to dial the number for you?" Fox asked bluntly.

"No, sir," the sergeant picked up the telephone receiver. Fox made sure that the number he dialed WAS the one to Samson's office. The sergeant stated his purpose and then listened at attention, his eyes flicking over to the faces of the two men facing him several times while saying, "Yes, sir!" repeatedly. Finally he put the phone down and pushed the buzzer to allow Colonel Fox and Major Meyers into the archive. "I'm sorry about the delay, sirs…"

"I'm sure Admiral Samson cautioned you about the dangers of reporting this visit to anybody, didn't he," Fox rubbed the lesson into the young man's head mercilessly.

"Yes, sir. He certainly did, sir!"

"Good. Then I don't want to hear later that some unauthorized Colonel or General got word of this, do I?"

"No, sir." The sergeant's eyes were bugging out by now. "I understand this is a question of national security, sir — my lips are sealed."

"Very well," Fox turned his back on the young man. "Carry on." He jerked his head at Meyers to follow him.

"Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!"

Fox and Meyers retraced their steps to the spot in the tall, narrow aisle where they had stopped the last time. Meyers went once more for the rolling ladder and pulled it into position, then held it as Fox ascended and carefully pulled first one box from its appointed spot and then another, and then another. With three of the cardboard boxes on the floor next to the ladder, Fox then descended and pulled the top off of the first box. "Where's the list?" he asked while looking through the exposed file tabs.

"Right here, sir," Meyers handed him a paper on which had been listed all of the project names that the Centre had returned to the Pentagon.

Fox dug through the box, then dug again. "Damn it!" he growled, then lifted the lid from the second box and dug a little harder. "Shit!" He lifted the third lid.

"Sir?"

The Colonel dug through the third box and then stared up into the dark face of his aide. "Well, Curtis' anecdotal evidence is sustained by a review of the boxes in question. There isn't shit in these boxes that has the least bit to do with the Centre or any of its research projects. This is all crappola — office supplies requisitions." He took several of the pages from the box, folded them, and put them in his breast pocket. "If this junk is classified, this country's on the steep and slippery slope straight to Hell."

"What do we do now, sir?" Meyers asked, helping Fox when the senior officer put one of the lids back on.

"We put these puppies right back where we found 'em and report back to Admiral Samson." Fox waited for Meyers to mount the ladder again before handing him up the first of the three boxes. "We'll also have to hope that Samson scared the shit out of that duty clerk with his talk of national security — because we're going to need a peek at the shipping manifest that was refused." He patted his pocket after Meyers had the third box in hand. "I'm betting that it was sent to the same address as is on the letterhead of these PO's."

He waited for Meyers to come down from the ladder again and then marched smartly with his aide at his heels back to the duty officer's post. "I want the shipping manifests for the last three days, sergeant."

"I'm sorry, but…"

"Don't," Fox got in the man's face nose to nose, "tell me those are classified too. Do I have to ask you to place ANOTHER call to Admiral Samson's office, sergeant?"

"Uh… no, sir," the man backpedaled meekly and pulled open a file cabinet drawer inside his cubicle and extracted a folder. "Here you go, sir."

Fox and Meyers pored over the many manifests until. "Here it is," Fox lifted the document from the folder. "Make me a copy of this, sergeant," he ordered briskly.

"Sir…"

"How do you feel about spending a couple of weeks in the stockade for disobeying a direct order?" Meyers narrowed his eyes at the young man.

"What do I tell MY direct superiors, sir?" the sergeant pleaded.

"Not a damned thing," Fox reminded him, "or didn't you hear what the Admiral had to say?"

The sergeant's face slumped when he realized he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. He quickly ran a copy of the manifest and handed it to Fox without another word.

"I won't tell anyone I saw this, and neither will you. Is that understood?" Fox said in a soft and dangerous voice.

"Yes, sir," the duty officer shuddered and filed the folder of manifests where it had been.

"Good. You remember that." Fox and Meyers gave the sergeant casual salutes and quickly left the facility.

"Hi Daddy!" Deb came through the hospital room door with a big smile on her face.

"Debbie!" Broots saved his work and shoved the rolling table with the laptop aside so that his little girl could sit down on the edge of the bed next to him and get a hug. "I hear you're doing better."

"I'm working on it," she said with a happy sigh as she felt her father's arms around her. "Grandpa talks to me every morning for a long time."

"He's taking good care of you, Sweetpea," Broots smoothed her hair from her face. "So, tell me, what have you been up to besides talking with Sydney every morning."

"I'm going to start working with Mrs. Macy at the library, putting books back on the shelves," she told him proudly. "Grandpa suggested it, and I start this afternoon."

"That's wonderful, Deb," the bedridden man could see the progress that Miss Parker was alluding to in the previous evening's conversation. "At least you won't be so bored now." He looked at her carefully. "Miss Parker also tells me that you and Kevin have gotten closer."

Deb blushed. "Well, yeah…" she answered in embarrassment. "I was kind of afraid of him for a while…"

"From what I hear, you're not very afraid of him anymore," Broots said with a note of authority and disapproval. "C'mon, Deb, spill."

"Geez, Dad! It was just a kiss or two," she scowled at him. "This is just like you were back when I was in high school…"

"Sweetpea, give me a little benefit of the doubt," Broots pleaded with his daughter. "I'm stuck here in this damned hospital and hear about you and Kevin spending a stormy afternoon in the tree house. I care, and I want to know…"

"Miss Parker had a long talk with me, Daddy," Deb informed him. "She was very clear on where she thought I should draw the lines, considering everything that's happened. And Sydney talked with Kevin too. You don't have to worry — we've been properly coached and warned." She shook her head in frustration. "Geez, you'd think we were school children again, rather than adults."

"Sweetpea, you're just starting to get over something pretty gruesome…"

"I know that! But I AM starting to get over it. And Kevin's helping," she insisted.

"Miss Parker told me about what happened when you went home too," Broots told his daughter. He cupped a hand at her cheek. "Maybe you'd better take someone with you the next time you go home to water the back yard."

"I will, Daddy," she promised. That would be one promise she'd have no problem keeping. The thought of going home again now was almost as distressing as the thought of closing her eyes and reliving things again. "Oh, and I went over to Janet's yesterday and saw Karen too. We spent the whole afternoon together — it was great! I haven't seen them since…" Her voice dropped off. "How much longer are you going to be stuck here?" she asked plaintively.

"I've got two more weeks in this cast," Broots told her gently, "and then we'll have to see how they want to do the physical therapy. The doctor tells me I'll have to learn to walk all over again — just like a baby. And that's IF there wasn't any nerve damage to the legs." He took her hands in his. "There's a chance that I won't walk again, Deb — that I'll be in a wheelchair from now on."

"When will we know for sure?" Her voice was small.

"We'll know more when the cast comes off and I've had a chance to start on the therapy. Speaking of which, isn't this the day that Sydney has his?"

"He's down with Pete right now," Deb told him. "Will you be working with Pete too? Grandpa claims that all Pete does on his therapy days is torture him — but I can see that he's moving around a little easier on his crutches lately."

"I don't know for sure — we'll have to see." Broots was quiet — thinking about the possibility of never being able to walk again was not one he liked to visit very often.

"You'll be in a wheelchair?" Deb's mind was following the uncomfortable train of thought.

"At first I'll be in a wheelchair for sure. Whether I stay in one is what's up in the air."

Deb leaned against her father's chest again and sighed as the arms closed around her again. Nothing was the way it was supposed to be. Her Daddy was supposed to be strong and capable — Grandpa Sydney too. She missed the feeling of safety that came with being with her life-long protectors. Then she smiled softly against Broots' chest — she had Kevin now, and he loved her. It might not be the was it was before, but it certainly wasn't ALL bad…

"I have no idea how this could have happened, Miss Parker, but I shall certainly have my people look into it," Congressman Carey's voice came loud and strong through the receiver. "Misuse of Federal resources to harass legitimate individuals or businesses is a serious offence."

"I agree," Miss Parker stated unequivocally. "And I appreciate all the assistance that you can give me in this matter, Congressman. Thank you."

"You're welcome, Miss Parker. You'll be hearing from my office the moment we have information for you."

Miss Parker pushed the End button on her handset and thought for a moment before reaching for the intercom button — only to pull back when she realized that her secretary was down in the cafeteria with Sam and WAS the reason she was making these calls. Instead she dialed the phone company operator. "Connect me with the office of Immigration and Naturalization Services in Washington, DC," she directed in a brisk, ask-no-questions voice.

"One moment please," the operator purred on the other end.

Miss Parker leaned her chin into the palm of one hand as she waited for her call to be put through. Having some kind of payback for being inflexible and not cooperating with the push to restart the more egregious of the research projects for the military had been expected — but she what she hadn't expected was that the first salvo would target relative innocents. The look of fear on Mei-Chiang's face would take a long time to forget — and be one of the things that would be hardest to forgive. Poor Xing-Li had looked almost ready to pass out from terror — she hoped Tyler had the available time to help her recover too.

"Immigration and Naturalization," came a voice after a single ring.

"I want to speak to whoever's in charge, NOW." Miss Parker put every last ounce of Ice Queen chill into her tone that she had. "My name is Miss Parker, and I am the Chairman of The Centre in Delaware, and I just had an attempted raid against some of my legally documented workers by representatives of your agency. I want to speak to someone in authority, and I want to speak to them NOW."

"Yes, ma'am," the operator answered smoothly. "Now let me put you through to Agent…"

"I don't want to talk to an agent," Miss Parker hissed. "I said I want to talk to whoever's in charge."

"I'm sorry, Miss Parker, but its against policy to…"

"I don't give a damn about your policy!" she let her voice get lower, more dangerous. "I have already been on the telephone with my congressman, and I have the ear of several Senators if I want them. I am NOT the kind of person you want to screw around with."

"Just one moment," the INS operator said and put her on hold. Miss Parker sighed. The rules of bureaucracy were almost as inflexible as steel, she knew. It would be a good test of just how much pull The Centre had in Washington to see whether she could bluff and growl her way through the red tape after all.

A click told her someone had picked up the line. "Miss Parker, my name is Evan Carlton. What can I do for you today?"

"Are you the man in charge?" she demanded.

"If you told me your problem, perhaps I can direct your call more effectively," he said, not missing a beat.

"I don't have the time to screw around talking to first one agent and then another," Miss Parker hissed. "I want to know by what right your officers come marching into my headquarters of The Centre and attempt to arrest two of my most valuable employees for being undocumented when I JUST went through all of the effort to rectify the matter legally with you folks. I want to know why your officers refused to accept the proper documentation when presented, and continued to try to remove my employees. And I want to know where the report that began this fiasco came from."

Obviously Carlton had at least heard of The Centre. "And your position at the Centre is…" he asked, obviously taking another report.

"I'm the Chairman, you idiot!" she bit back. "Your men attempted to walk out of here with my executive secretary and that of my Executive Assistant. I am not going to be content with platitudes — I want to know how this happened, who instigated the raid and who is responsible for officers not honoring official documentation when shown."

"Miss Parker, please. If you will just calm down…"

"I will NOT calm down, you insignificant insect! I had two INS officers literally in my outer office disrupting my ability to do my job for no good reason." Miss Parker allowed some of her fury to finally erupt. "Let me talk to your supervisor."

"Yes, I think that might be wise," Carlton agreed and put her on hold again.

As she waited, Sam knocked and stuck his head through her door. She held up a restraining finger to prevent him from saying a word. "I'm looking into it, and I'll let you know the moment I have anything. Is she OK?"

Mollified, Sam nodded and pulled back, closing the door as another click came on the line. "Miss Parker, my name is Elliot Van Deisler, and I am the Director of INS. I understand that there has been a problem with some of my officers entering your place of business?"

"That's right," she snapped, no longer in any mood to be soothed or patronized. "I will explain the situation one last time, and then I expect to get some answers from you." She slipped her chin into her hand again. She REALLY didn't have time for this…

"So what are we going to do now?" Burns demanded the moment the last of the ad-hoc committee had settled around the little table at the back of the deli. "Unless we farm Veracity out to another of our R&D firms, it's dead in the water. The Centre has the scientist who has running the show sewn up tight, and now the police there have our operative in custody from his trying to break into her home last night."

"Relax," Phil Baldwin said in his usual soft tones. "I've started putting pressure on the Centre itself, and I did some research into key personnel working there to see what other ammunition we have to work with. The new administration certainly doesn't have as much juicy material to work with that they'd just as soon keep under wraps, but that doesn't mean…"

"What do you mean, you started putting pressure on the Centre yourself?" Jackson demanded. "We were going to do the research and wait for contacts with the scientists involved to either fly or crash before we did anything."

"It wasn't much — I just traced down a couple of Lyle's old Chinese cuties still on the Centre payroll and sent INS after 'em," Baldwin crowed. "Lyle used to keep them undocumented so that when they disappeared…" he could see the looks of revulsion at being reminded of what Lyle used to do. "The Centre's been a busy place lately — nicely up in the air enough that I seriously doubt that they've corrected the error…"

"Don't be too sure of that," Canfield shook his head. "I was in the barbershop this morning when one of the Delaware congressmen was talking about some woman on the telephone first thing in the morning raising Hell about an unwarranted raid on her offices. He sounded like he might want to look into the matter. If that was you…" He glared at Baldwin.

"We agreed to wait a week before starting anything else," Jackson reminded the NSA accountant angrily. "What else did you do?"

"I talked to some of my associates in the office," Baldwin looked around the table defensively. "I thought…"

"Talk about screwing up!" Canfield shook his head. "We still have the scientist from Black Hole willing to work with us, right, General?"

"My operative was able to get in contact with him while he was abroad at a conference, and unlike Veracity's scientist, THIS one was not only willing but eager to get back to work," Curtis reported bluntly. "I got the call just this morning. So I'm wondering why we can't just make do with Black Hole and leave the Centre alone otherwise? We don't need to cause any more waves…"

"Black Hole and Veracity were the most urgent items we were funding," Burns stated, "but the rest of them were equally important in their own rights. But Doug has a point — we have a solid commitment to resume work on Black Hole. If we continue to hound the Centre, it will put them on a higher state of alert and may make it more difficult to get any genuine progress on Black Hole."

"I can't call back NSA agents without causing questions," Baldwin stated frankly and a little defensively. "And I don't see what harm a little more disruption there will do. For what it's worth, it might cause JUST enough chaos that Black Hole can slip back into action without notice."

Burns turned to Curtis. "Have your contact tell the Black Hole scientist to hold off a bit, until AFTER Baldwin's jumping the gun has run its course and things calm down a bit."

"What about the operative in custody in Delaware?" Curtis asked curtly. "That's the reason I called this meeting, you know…"

"Burns looked around the table. "What do you gentlemen feel? Do we try to salvage this and maybe call attention to ourselves in the bargain, or do we take a chance that the operative knows enough to keep his mouth shut until we can get him out of there with very little fanfare?"

"What the hell was he doing breaking into the scientist's home?" Jackson demanded.

"It's called intimidation…" Curtis explained defensively.

"It's called damned stupid, when one is dealing with the Centre," Canfield shook his head. "These people wrote some of the book on intimidation — and it certainly doesn't include walking into a place where one can be easily arrested. I'm for letting the man hang out to dry until we can get him away without making waves."

"I'm afraid I'm with George," Jackson agreed. "My only question is whether he knows enough to keep his mouth shut?"

"He will," Curtis growled. "I'll make sure he understands the consequences of doing otherwise."

"Phil?" Burns looked at the mousy accountant.

"Even if he didn't keep his mouth shut, it would be his word against ours," Baldwin said with certainty. "Leave him there."

Burns turned to Curtis. "That's your answer then, Doug."

Curtis sighed. "Yeah, it is…"

Kevin watched his mentor head off for the den again and the next long session on his therapy machine, then turned to help Deb pack away the sandwich makings that had provided their lunch. "So, when do you leave for the library?"

"Soon," Deb answered, tucking the lunchmeat in a drawer and replacing mayonnaise and mustard on the shelf. "I really should take off as soon as I finish cleaning up here."

"Where IS the library from here?" Kevin asked, curious. "I've never been inside one…"

"Three blocks that way, then turn left two blocks – about a block closer than Oggie's," she told him, straightening and pointing. She smiled at him. "I'll have to take you down with me one of these days – not that you need any reading material at the moment…"

"Tell me about it…"

"Kevin," Sydney's voice floated from through the den door, "I could use your help adjusting this damned thing…"

"I'll be right back," Kevin smiled at her, and he sped to his mentor's side to make the necessary adjustments in the movement arc that the therapist had insisted upon and then strapped the leg into the device. Sydney settled back into his pillows with a tired sigh and closed his eyes for his nap, and Kevin hurried back into the kitchen. Deb was just finished stacking the plates in the dishwasher and drying her hands. "How long will you be?" he asked, picking up his discussion from exactly where they'd left off.

"I'll be home a little after five," Deb told him, folding the towel and draping it over the edge of the sink. "It's not as if I'm leaving for an extended period, you know…"

"I know," he sighed, following her as she walked toward the front door. "It's just that I've gotten used to having you around again, and then now you're going to be gone."

"I'll be back," Deb repeated with a twinkle in her eye, "but I wouldn't mind your saying goodbye more properly before I go…"

"A more proper goodbye?" Kevin was confused again. He put up a hand to give her a wave similar to the one that he'd seen many of them use.

Deb shook her head again at the gaps in his knowledge and grabbed the hand and dragged him forward so that she could stretch up to kiss him. "A more proper goodbye, you see?"

"Oh! So THAT'S how it's done!" Kevin breathed and, with a smile, wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips down on hers again, delighting when she allowed him to deepen the kiss and pull her even closer. Her arms wrapped around him too and began moving up and down his back over his tee shirt in slow, circular movements that both soothed and excited. Hoping that she'd experience the same pleasure, Kevin's arms began to move in similar circles, and Deb relaxed and pressed closer to him with a soft moan. When they finally parted, both were breathless and had hearts pounding faster.

"I'd better get going," Deb managed as Kevin kissed her chin and then her throat, and then she kissed him again.

Kevin ended the kiss a little more quickly. "Yeah, I suppose you should," he said softly into her ear, making her shiver when he kissed her there too. "Have a good afternoon," he said, burying his nose in her soft hair.

"I will," she whispered back, kissing the underside of his chin and then simply laying her head against the front of his shoulder. "I love you."

"I love you too," he told her gently, finding the simple act of holding her close easily as pleasurable as anything that had come before. "Go on, now – you don't want to be late for your first day at the library."

"I'll see you later," Deb said finally, moving out of his arms and through the front door and casting several long looks backwards over her shoulder as she walked down the sidewalk.

Kevin sighed and walked across the street to his favorite tree and cleared his mind to run through his exercise a few times before settling back into a long afternoon's reading. He had managed to get through only the first few movements when, "At it again, Quai Chang?" sounded mockingly behind him.

"Looks like it, doesn't it?" he responded without stopping the progression of moves.

"I saw you mooning after the blonde cutie," Crystal said in a biting tone. "Wouldn't you know that you have a blonde girlfriend…"

Kevin deliberately refused to respond and kept at his exercise. Crystal moved into his circle of vision and plopped herself down at the base of the tree. "What did you do, piss her off?"

"She's going to work," Kevin closed his eyes in frustration and tried to keep his mind focused on the exercise, then halted and glared down at her when his mind drew a blank as to what to do next. "Listen," he demanded, "Is there something you want from me, or do you just like to bother me all the time?"

"It's a public place," she replied, leaning back on her elbows. "I have as much right to be here as you do." She watched as Kevin stood up straight again and tried to clear his mind to start the exercise over again. "So," she asked finally, just as he was beginning to move again, "what is it about her that turns you on?"

Once again, her question broke his concentration, and Kevin glared at her again. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"What is it about her that's so damned special that you don't even want to talk to me?" Crystal demanded. "Have you stopped to consider that I might be a better kisser than she is? That I might give better…"

"Have YOU stopped to consider that the reason I don't want to talk to you is that you make fun of and talk badly about just about everything in my life?" Kevin demanded back. "That all you ever do is criticize and call me names? Have you considered that you don't act friendly – so I really have no reason to consider you a friend?" Kevin walked back toward the street and Sydney's front door.

"Why can't you take a joke?" Crystal asked in a suddenly plaintive tone.

"Why can't you stop trying to make jokes that don't fly?" Kevin tossed over his shoulder as he looked both ways and crossed the street.

"Why don't you give me a chance?" she yelled across the street.

"Why don't you prove to me you deserve one?" he yelled back and then turned to go back into the house.

How could Sydney possibly suggest that Deb might become jealous of Crystal? He didn't even LIKE Crystal!

"It's about time you got here," Stiller snapped at the young sergeant on the opposite side of the table from him.

"It took a while for the General to get a hold of me," the young man explained easily. "I had another task that had to be finished before I was free to come."

"So, when are they going to get me the hell out of here?" Stiller demanded, looking down at the orange pantsuit the police had forced him to put on in disgust. "I want to get out of here, out of these clothes and back to civilization."

"Well, that's the problem," the sergeant answered, keeping a wary eye on a man who technically was his superior officer, but whom he couldn't obey. "The General sent me to tell you that you'll just have to hang tight for a while longer. If he tried to get you out of here now, it would call attention…"

"You mean I'm STUCK here?" Stiller cried in angry desperation.

"I suggest you get a hold of yourself, Colonel," the sergeant said, motioning for the police officer near the door to back away again. "The situation is a little more precarious than it has been previously. You'll need to be patient…"

"YOU try being patient in a six by ten cell, sergeant," Stiller spat quietly. "I was told when I agreed to take on this assignment that General Curtis would see to it that I wouldn't get left behind in civilian custody if something happened…"

"Circumstances have changed, sir," the sergeant reiterated solidly. "General Curtis told me that you would understand – and that I was to remind you of the potential consequences of your lack of patience and cooperation at this stage of the game."

"Right," Stiller snarled. "He can't get me out of this joint, but he feels confident enough to threaten me in it? Just what kind of an idiot does he take me for?"

"I'm not in any position to answer that question," the sergeant answered with a deadpan face. He didn't feel that it would help matters any to report on how the General had waxed eloquent about the apparent idiocy of Colonel Stiller in his presence before ordering him to deliver the message. "All I can tell you is that you are being asked to be patient, and to be quiet. Even as a military officer, in a civilian arena, you have the right to be silent or, if need be, to plead the Fifth Amendment."

"Does the General have any intentions of getting me out of here at all?" Stiller asked, slumping in disappointment just a little.

"The General told me that efforts would be made on your behalf when execution of those efforts would not call attention to the work you've been doing otherwise – or jeopardize other, associated efforts being carried out even as we speak," the sergeant repeated the words without fully understanding them. "I'm assuming you know exactly what he meant by that?"

"I do," the Colonel grumbled. "Tell the General that he doesn't have anything to worry about – I know how to keep my mouth shut."

"Very good, sir." The sergeant rose. "I will leave my card with the duty officer here – if you have anything you need that you think that I can help you with, please feel free to have them get in touch with me."

"Thanks," Stiller mumbled, swallowing back the "for nothing" that sat on the tip of his tongue. The sergeant saluted briskly and then nodded for the police officer to let him out of the interview room. Stiller sat at the table, his head in his hands, knowing himself to have been abandoned and left behind.

Curtis had too much riding on the rest of the work going on to bother with one man ending up behind civilian bars. He should have known – or at least prepared for the possibilities. Mitchell had seen his face the day he'd cut her – the Centre had his attempted break-in on videotape. If he didn't think of something, he was going to end up behind bars for a very long time — and it looked like he was going to be hung out to dry.

There had to be SOMEthing he could do… Considering the quality of the promises made by General Curtis, maybe he had some serious re-thinking to do. Then again, did he really want to see whether or not Curtis had justification for warning him to keep his mouth shut?

Damn!

"You told me that the report would be legit — that it would nail us two genuine, undocumented aliens in a high-profile firm! You lied to me!"

Baldwin closed his eyes in frustration and thanked his lucky stars that he'd remembered to close the office door before answering the telephone this time. "Look, I had good cause to suspect…"

"You don't call INS in on suspicion, Phil," the angry woman's voice shouted into his ear. "My signature was all over that so-called 'anonymous' report. So who's ass do you think is in the wringer right now, jerk-wad? I sent out an enforcement team on YOUR say-so as far as legitimacy is concerned — I could get canned for this."

"Beverly…"

"Don't you 'Beverly honey' me, Phillip Baldwin. Do me a favor — lose my number. Do NOT call me again, you son of a bitch!" The phone was obviously slammed down on the other end of the line, because Baldwin heard a loud crash and then the dial tone.

This was not good. Obviously the Centre was more on top of things even amid their chaos than he'd first estimated. What was more, their attention to cleaning up the messes left by their immediate predecessors stood to cause him a great deal of difficulty when his own associates began to check into the allegations he'd so casually dropped the day before.

He stood and went over to his file cabinet and pulled the top drawer out, and then pushed the hanging files to one side so that he could reach through to the metal box that sat behind all the files. When things started to unravel in this office, they'd be through the place with a fine-toothed comb. It wouldn't do for them to stumble across the carefully-maintained books that kept scrupulous record of the moneys that had been funneled through that office and into checks written to a number of research and development firms.

He opened the box and deposited all the records into his briefcase. It might be a good idea for him to not be at work for the next few days — to lie low until the hubbub over false allegations of Chinese infiltration of the Centre causing a national security crisis had died down a bit. With any luck, the clerical workers that he'd spoken his rumors to wouldn't remember who had made the original statements. But right now, luck seemed to be running against the committee — and he had no intentions of taking any chances. Ending up in a cell next to Curtis' operative was NOT what he had in mind for his future.

Thank God he had a friend he could call as things played out to find out how far up a creek he was. On a hunch, he pulled the card out of his wallet again, picked up the telephone and dialed — hitting an answering machine.

"Harry? This is Phil. The INS raid on the Centre was a bust — the bitch had already seen to getting the cuties' documented. When the NSA swoops in, there's going to be hell to pay if my name is linked. I'm going to ground for a while — I'll be in touch." He hung up the phone and grabbed his sports coat from the back of his chair. He looked around the room at the framed certificates of appreciation and achievement that marked twelve long and fruitful years of service.

And then he was out the door and making his way as casually as he could to the elevators and freedom.

"Do we have a trace on that call?" FBI Special Agent Thomas Gillespie asked his colleague.

"Comes from NSA headquarters in DC," Special Agent Sean McCall replied after gazing at the equipment for a while. "Didn't you just finish up working a case involving the Centre?"

"Don't remind me," Gillespie grumbled. "That's what ended up with me being reassigned here to the DC area after being SAC for the Dover office for three years." He rewound the tape of the conversation and pulled the spool from the machine. "Looks like Fate or Karma or whatever you wanna call it wants to keep me close and involved in the Centre."

"Well, if nothing else, it sounds as if we've had somebody try to use the INS against the Centre and had it backfire," McCall observed patiently. "It might not be such a bad idea to call over there and see just what's cooking?"

"Why is it that every time something has to do with the Centre, nothing is straight-forward?" Gillespie asked rhetorically. "Here we are, investigating a Senator for possible ethics violations or illegal activity, and the trail leads straight back to the Centre again."

"Just file the report, Tom," McCall shook his head. "You're making too much of this. We do the grunt work, and we let the big boys and girls figure out the puzzle — remember?"

"And just what the hell do you think YOU'LL be doing while I'm running clerical errands?" Gillespie demanded.

McCall just blinked at him. "Tracing down the precise location of that NSA office and finding out who would be calling Senator Burns to report that an INS/NSA scam has gone sour and he's bailing for a while," he replied matter-of-factly, "and then putting THAT into the report as well."

"We should probably let someone know to go over to NSA and find out what's cooking there too. If whatever went down at INS really was a scam, and what's going down at NSA is one too, then we have a rotten apple somewhere."

"Better talk to Assistant Director Berghoff," McCall suggested. "He's the one that put us out looking for whatever it is we're looking for — it sure would help if we knew exactly what we were up against."

"That would be nice for a change," Gillespie grumbled more to himself than to his partner and climbed from the back of the van and headed for the car parked a discrete distance away.

Sydney yawned and reached for the coffee mug that Kevin had brought him a few minutes earlier. He took a long and cautious sip of the hot liquid and turned a wary eye on the stack of folders from the newest box. Strangely, the top few folders seemed almost archaic — far older and more worn than were any of the folders that had come before or would come after. He tipped his head and tried to make out the project name on the tab at the head of the top folder, but evidently the white paper on which the name had been printed in a spidery hand had just been handle too often to have much substance to it anymore. At the slightest touch of his finger, the white fell away from the faded manila and floated beneath the daybed where retrieval would be difficult without help.

Sydney sighed and took up the top folder and opened it carefully, then frowned. The documents in that folder were in German — and in old German script at that. Reading the ornate script aloud teased at the edges of his memory, but he had deliberately put all memory of the language from his mind a long time since. He could pronounce the words, but the meaning eluded him. Sighing again with the thought that he'd have to eventually dig out a German/English dictionary to make any sense of this folder whatsoever, he began to close the folder and set it aside. A small piece of onionskin slipped from somewhere inside as he lifted the folder from his lap and landed on his chest. Setting the folder on the table where he'd intended to put it, he reached for the nearly transparent paper.

His eyes were drawn to the signature at the bottom of the short note, and he felt his heart give a hard thump of astonishment and dismay. He should have known — after all, years ago he'd discovered that the man was hiding in plain sight here in the States, pretending to be an optometrist by the name of Zeller in New York State under contract to the Centre. Still, the sight of a note signed "Dr. Werner Krieg" was enough to make Sydney's hands begin to shake and his stomach to turn.

Swallowing hard, he looked to the note itself and was astonished to see that it was in English. What on earth was this little mot doing in a folder filled with documents in German? Sydney's mind sought out a logical solution, only to wish he could discard it in the next moment. Krieg, or Zeller at that time, had been under contract to the Centre. Krieg had been in charge of human experimentation at Dachau during the war. Certainly…

Dear Mr. Parker,

It is my pleasure to report to you that the subjects you wished tested and made arrangements for have arrived and have been assigned into my keeping. You can expect regular reports from me regarding their progress and any test results that might interest you.

Your servant,

Dr. Werner Krieg

Sydney's stomach turned and he had to swallow back the bitter taste of bile. Krieg HAD had contact with the Centre — or at least with the man who had eventually made the Centre what it had been when he'd started working there, a powerful research and development think tank. Evidently this Mr. Parker had arranged for test subjects to be placed in Krieg's tender care.

Sydney set the note carefully aside and retrieved the folder filled with German documents again to began leafing through the pages one by one, looking carefully to see if the names of these test subjects was listed anywhere. Several of the documents were signed by Dr. Krieg — he guessed that they were progress reports on some of the horrific experiments that he himself had been made a victim of as a child. As he scanned the pages, some of the coarse and guttural language his captors had used with the prisoners began to bubble up from the forgotten depths of his mind.

Several times he had to lean back into his pillows and press his hands against his ears. It had been decades since he had shut away all memory of the shouts, the screams, the cries — and the ever-present stench of death. Now it flooded in on him mercilessly, overwhelming his ability to manage his memories.

Closing his eyes and putting hands to his ears couldn't put away the sounds or visions of horror. As if watching a movie, he saw again the open pits filled with emaciated bodies the Germans hadn't had a chance to bury properly and hide before the camp had been liberated. He could hear the rumbling echoes of the carts of bodies being hauled from the cyanide 'showers' to the ovens to be reduced to ash. His nose felt as if it was filled once more with the oily smell of the smoke that poured from the low chimneys and coated everything with a thin film of grease that could never be completely removed. And finally he remembered the feeling of doom and hopelessness as he'd carried out his assigned task of sorting through the stacks of personal effects of the people who'd been gassed and burned for anything of use or value.

As if setting aside something obscenely offensive, he tried to put the folder back on the coffee table, but it fell to the floor from his shaking fingers — spilling papers everywhere. Sydney forced himself to bend as far as he could to retrieve the awful documents — unwilling to let any of them blot the innocence of his den carpet — and then stared at one of the first documents he pulled up. It was an entrance document, detailing the internment of a young boy who had been assigned a number that still was tattooed on his forearm. Sydney blinked and then swallowed back more bile — he was staring at his own entrance document. The document directly behind it was that of his twin brother, Jacob — the numbers assigned to them just as consecutive as the documents had been in the folder.

He took a deep breath and set the entrance documents aside and continued to pull more from the floor. One had flown to a spot almost out of reach under the coffee table, and he saved that one for last. With an effort that almost tipped the CPM machine over, he stretched and finally dragged the paper close enough to get a hold on it. He glanced at it, and then glanced again — then stared at it in sickened amazement.

It was another letter from Dr. Krieg to this Mr. Parker — only this one had been neatly typed in English using the elaborate typeface that belonged to the old German script:

Dear Mr. Parker,

All of my tests have confirmed that the Grüen twins are indeed the kind of individuals that you were interested in. Their intellectual prowess is quite remarkable, as you had predicted. And so, as per your instructions and as soon as I can justify sending them, I shall make sure that they are sent to America to finish their education. The parents and sister have been disposed of, as you requested, so that all emotional ties to family or kin have been severed with the exception of the twin-bond. I have been in contact with your associate in Luxembourg, who is more than willing to present himself as the lads' uncle when the time comes…

Sydney closed his eyes and groaned aloud this time. An associate in Luxembourg — Uncle Fritz? Uncle Fritz had been a Centre operative? Then the insinuation of the brief paragraph struck home.

Setting a pattern that would emotionally deprive young people of their parents, he and Jacob had lost their parents to the gas chambers —apparently not because they were of Jewish descent or had worked in the underground, but because some man at a nascent Centre had put forth a request. They had been turned over to a Centre operative to raise after the war, and then sent on to America to finish their education.

The Centre had interfered and stolen his life, just as surely as it had stolen Jarod's and Angelo's and Miss Parker's — only the hideous truth had managed to stay carefully hidden all this time. The Centre had written the death warrants of his mother, father and sister — and the script under which Krieg had 'educated' them while they were interned at Dachau, and later Uncle Fritz had educated them in Belgium. His whole life was nothing but one betrayal and lie after another — all orchestrated and directed by the Centre. Only now, when it was too late to undo the damage, was he hearing the truth.

Sydney's shaking fingers followed the cord from the CPM machine to the remote and shut the device off, then struggled with the buckles that held his leg firmly to the machine. Once he had himself free of his torture device, he was reaching for his crutches. For once he didn't feel the rush of pain that always accompanied his getting to his feet and putting any weight at all on the knee.

Without a word, he moved through the kitchen and into the garage, into the driver's seat of his Lincoln, and started up the engine. He didn't know where he was going, but it would be somewhere far from documents written in German that proved that he was no better — nothing more — than yet another Centre lab-rat, doomed to spend an entire lifetime running a Centre-directed maze and perpetuating in his turn the evil that had been done him. Jarod had been wrong. He WAS a monster — a carefully conceived and nurtured monster.

It was enough to drive a man mad, he thought as he backed out of the garage and aimed his car down Washington Street.

Feedback, please: mbumpus99hotmail


	14. Questionable Returns

Resolutions – 14

Questionable Returns

by MMB

"Mr. Tyler will see you now," Xing-Li announced to the short and grey-haired man standing at her desk. "Please go on in."

Dr. Franz Ziegler didn't even acknowledge the secretary's graceful gesture, but swept past her toward the office door. He had never approved of Lyle's perverse taste for exotic women, or of his tendency to put them in positions of authority. Preferring to treat them as if they were nonexistent, he ignored them as much as was practical. It was personally repugnant to see that the new administration intended not to simply do away with their services after all.

"Dr. Ziegler, thank you for coming," Tyler rose from behind his desk and extended his hand to the elderly-looking gentleman who only very slowly returned the favor.

"Mr. Tyler," Ziegler nodded his head slightly. "To what do I owe this summons? I am just now back in the country…"

"We know that, Doctor," Tyler said congenially, gesturing for the psychiatrist to take a seat in the comfortable chair provided, sitting down himself. "And we wouldn't have interrupted your day if it wasn't important." He folded his hands on his desk and gazed at the man evenly. "A week or so ago, you were requested to close down operations on Project Black Hole."

"Yes," Ziegler replied without even blinking. "I regretted that I was unable to finish what I had started — I was very close, you know…"

"Yes, I understand," Tyler nodded. "Unfortunately, we have had an opportunity to re-examine the authorization under which this project was undertaken and found it to be of a highly questionable nature. Considering the implications and potential uses to which the project could be put, the decision was made to stop work immediately. It seems, now, that some of the military officers involved in these projects have decided that our decision wasn't a wise one and are attempting to contact the scientists involved directly. They want these scientists to very quietly start up their research again." Tyler watched the man's face carefully. "Have you been contacted?"

Something indefinable shifted in the back of the man's steely grey eyes, and Tyler was suddenly very certain that whatever came out of the man's mouth was going to be a bald-faced lie. "No, I've heard nothing," Ziegler said smoothly. "And if I am contacted, what am I supposed to do other than what we all were instructed to do previously?"

"You should know that the men pushing to get this research restarted are unscrupulous," Tyler forged ahead, hoping to shake the man into admitting whatever it was that he was hiding. "A research chemist was attacked at her home and injured because she refused to cooperate. The Blue Cove police arrested a man last night trying to break into her home. If you are contacted and refuse, you may wish to have Centre protection both on the job and at home."

"I seriously doubt that this will be a problem, Mr. Tyler," the German's soft accent rustled like tissue in Tyler's ears. "But I shall certainly keep your office informed if I am contacted by anyone wanting me to restart my research. Although, I must admit, I am a little at loose ends now — I put in many years on Black Hole that have now come to nothing." Just a hint of frustration and disappointment had managed to creep around the psychiatrist's tight control. "Do you have any idea when I will be given another similarly intriguing project to work on?"

"That will be up to the director of your department to decide," Tyler stated flatly, frankly disappointed in the German. "I have very little to do with that end of Centre operations except in a very general sense."

"The director of my department has been indisposed due to health concerns for several weeks now, for no apparent reason," Ziegler pointed out carefully. "Perhaps the administration should be looking into finding a replacement in the near future. I might offer that I myself was once under consideration for the job…"

"I shall pass along your suggestion to Miss Parker, Doctor," Tyler nodded and rose from his seat. "I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to see me."

"And a good afternoon to you, Mr. Tyler." Dr. Ziegler shook hands with the young man and walked from the office with a superior air about him. Tyler waited until he was sure the man was out of his outer office and then walked out to Xing-Li. "Call Mr. Atlee and make SURE we have an ample watch on that guy."

"Yes, sir." The Chinese woman's tone was still subdued, very wary.

Tyler looked down at her. Her morning's excitement had taken away a great deal of the limited sparkle that she'd managed to acquire over the past few days of her new position. "Are you OK?" he asked in concern.

"I'm fine," she nodded, embarrassed by his continued solicitude. Her boss had stayed doggedly by her side at the cafeteria for far longer than she'd imagined he would, insisting that she drink some apple juice and just relax in a very unprofessional manner. It seemed apparent that his concern had not subsided over the course of the day's subsequent routine. "I'll call Mr. Atlee right now…"

"Xing-Li," Tyler interrupted gently, "it's OK to admit that you're not feeling quite up to snuff after what happened this morning…"

The almond eyes flicked up to his and then immediately down again and reached for the telephone. "I'm fine, sir. You don't need to worry about me." She pressed a few buttons and waited for a moment. "Mr. Tyler would like to request that Mr. Atlee has an ample watch placed on a Doctor Franz Ziegler. Could you have him call back and confirm? Thanks." She looked up at him. "Mr. Atlee's office will be getting back to you, sir."

Tyler could see that she was determined to forge on through the day with her professionalism intact. From somewhere beneath that otherwise compliant and cooperative exterior she had summoned a steely stubbornness that was surprising. He could battle it, or let it win — for now. He decided to wait until later to try to talk to her again. "Thanks. Could you let me know when my next appointment arrives, please?"

"Yes, sir," she replied, turning her gaze back to the work she'd been doing when he'd emerged. Couldn't he tell that she was just protecting his honor — keeping their work relationship strictly professional, regardless of what had happened that morning? After all, it had been Miss Parker that had ordered him to stay with her after that frightening moment when it seemed as if her American dream had been about to shatter. For her to have fallen apart that badly had damaged her sense of 'face' greatly – for him to continue to worry about her was unseemly.

She felt his eyes remain on her for a long moment, and then he turned and went back into his office without another word. Alone at last, she could allow herself to blush and her fingers to slow to a halt on the keyboard.

Her American boss was turning out to be quite different from the kind of boss she had been trained to expect. And she had to admit to herself, deep down where nobody else could ever hear or see, having him so gently taking care of her that morning had been an astonishing experience. Was this what Mei-Chiang had found with her giant fiancé? WAS it true that American men, instead of being cannibalistic sadists, were gentler and far more considerate than the kind of Chinese counterpart she had been trained to serve?

Well, she schooled herself strictly, dreaming about her American boss would NOT get this report typed in. She sighed and resumed her patient and skillful typing.

"Say, Sydney, did you want me to call Deb and have her stop by the store on the way home for some stuff for dinner?" Kevin called toward the back of the house, his eyes once more tired of reading the fine print of Centre documentation. He waited for a reply for a moment, letting his mind slowly let go of the intriguing and engrossing material it had been digesting, and then rose and stretched when no answer was forthcoming from his mentor.

"Sydney," he repeated as he walked through the dining room and into the kitchen, "what about dinner tonight? Did you want me to cook this time?"

He frowned when still no reply issued from the den. He walked over to stand in the doorway and then gaped. The CPM machine was still on the daybed, but there was no Sydney strapped into it. Papers were spread across the coffee table as if scattered there randomly, but of Sydney there wasn't a sign. It was if the man had just up and vanished from his customary spot in the house.

This wasn't like him, Kevin knew. Sydney was a gracious and polite host and housemate — just as he had requested Kevin tell him when he was leaving and where he was going, he imagined that Sydney would normally be loathe to just take off without leaving similar information behind.

He headed out of the front door and over to where he knew the Centre sweeper assigned to guard the front of the house usually parked. "Hi," he greeted the man, who had watched him approach the car with some concern.

"Is there something wrong?" Joe asked quickly.

"I'm not sure," Kevin answered truthfully. "Did Sydney go somewhere?"

Joe nodded. "About a half hour ago, I saw him backing his car out of the driveway. He looked like he normally does, so I figured he'd spoken to you ahead of time…"

Kevin shook his head. "Uh-unh. He didn't say a word."

Joe frowned. "Dr. Green knows how important it is that I stay informed as to the comings and goings here, so that I can provide proper security." Dr. Green had a reputation for being completely cooperative with all security measures. For him to just take off without leaving at least SOME word…

"Do you have any idea where he'd go?"

The sweeper only shook his head. "I'm not as familiar with Dr. Green's habits as someone like, say, Mr. Atlee would be…" Joe reached in his breast pocket for his cell phone. "I'll call Mr. Atlee — maybe Dr. Green talked to him first."

Kevin leaned against the side of the car and listened as the sweeper called into the Centre. "Mr. Atlee, this is Joe… No, well, I'm not sure. Dr. Green drove out about a half-hour ago, and I was just wondering if he'd called you and told you where he intended to go?… NO?" Joe looked up at Kevin with concern. "Well, what do you… No, I'll stay put right here. I have a rather worried young man…" He listened, and whatever Sam was saying was not making Joe happy at all. "Yes, sir. I understand, sir." He disconnected the call. "Mr. Atlee said that he'd get in touch with Miss Parker and see if she knows anything — his advice to you is just to go in the house and wait. He'll call you there when he knows something."

"Hey!" he heard Crystal's voice call from across the street in the park. "Did you lose somebody or something?"

"Go away," Kevin mumbled too softly to be heard, but added a dismissive wave the meaning of which would be unmistakable and started to walk toward the front door of the house. He felt vaguely lost and alone without Sydney around. The older man had been such a consistent and steady support in the days since he'd been released from that prison the Centre had held him in his entire life — having that influence suddenly removed was almost frightening. His first glance once in the house was at the clock.

Deb would be home soon. He'd never needed her more.

"Miss Parker, it's Mr. Atlee on two for you…" Mei-Chiang announced quietly.

"Thank you," Miss Parker replied and picked up the telephone. "Sam — what's up?"

"Did Sydney call you this afternoon?" Sam asked without preamble.

Miss Parker blinked in surprise. "No, why?"

"I just got a call from Joe, the sweeper I have assigned to watch Sydney's during the day. He says that Sydney went somewhere, drove off, and he was calling to find out if I knew anything about it."

"What about Kevin? Sydney probably would have told him if he was going somewhere…"

"Joe said that Kevin was worried — so evidently Sydney must not have said anything to him." Sam closed his eyes. They really did NOT need another disappearance or kidnapping right now… "Any ideas?"

Miss Parker shook her head, stunned. "He's usually pretty well worn out when he gets home from therapy — and that was today. I'm surprised he even had the energy to move!"

"What do you want me to do?" Sam wanted to know. "Do you want me to send out…"

"Not yet," Miss Parker shook her head. "Give Syd time to do whatever it is that called him away so unexpectedly and then come home…" A thought occurred. "Did Kevin say that there had been any telephone calls?"

"Joe didn't say that he did… I can call and ask."

"Let me talk to him," she interrupted. "You hang tight until you hear from me, OK?"

"Yes, Miss Parker," Sam replied and then paused. "How's Mei-Chiang doing up there?"

"As soon as we find out where Syd's off to, I think you should probably think about taking her home with you and taking care of her. She's been very quiet and a little reticent all day — definitely not her usual self. Do your best to reassure her that there's no way in hell that we'll let any governmental agency do anything to her or take her away."

"Don't worry, I'll let her know that she's safe now," Sam reassured her. "And thank you for keeping an eye on her for me today."

"Not a problem," Miss Parker told him, then disconnected and dialed Sydney's number.

"Hello? Sydney?" Kevin's voice answered the telephone almost immediately.

"No, Kevin, it's me," she told him. "Sam called me to see if Syd had called me before he left. I thought I'd call you and see if there had been a telephone call or anything that Syd might have answered…"

"No," he told her, his tone sagging into worry again. "Nothing."

"What was he doing after he got home from Dover?"

He shrugged. "We had lunch, then he went into the den and got on the CPM and had his nap — then I suppose he started to read again…"

A little voice in the back of her mind started to sound off. "What was he reading? Do you know?"

"More of the stuff from the archive, I'd imagine," he answered. "I know that there were papers all over the coffee table when I found him missing."

"What are the papers about?" Miss Parker had a sneaky hunch that those papers could be important. "Go see what the project was that he was looking into."

Kevin carried the cordless handset into the den and sat down on the daybed. "I don't know that I can tell you what this was about," he said finally, sorting through the papers. "They're all really old and in German — and I don't read German at all."

"German!" Miss Parker frowned. "Nothing stands out to you?"

The young Pretender pushed through the papers until he uncovered the onionskin note. "Wait a minute — here's something in English: a note to a Mr. Parker."

"From whom?" Miss Parker was totally taken aback, and her voice was breathy with surprise.

"A Dr. Werner Krieg. Something about the test subjects had arrived."

"Oh my God!" Miss Parker hadn't heard the name Krieg for over eleven years — not since Sydney had found out that the man who had been his torturer in Dachau during the war had been working quietly under contract to the Centre for years. Sydney's reaction at that time had been extreme, considering his normally calm and objective exterior. It was the one time she had seen him virtually at the point of killing a man in cold blood — only to hold back when his self-recriminations gave him pause. "What else is there? There has to be something else…"

Kevin sorted quickly through the very old paperwork. "Here's another letter — this one's typed. Boy, they had fancy typewriters in those days…"

"Who's it from?"

"Krieg again — and to Mr. Parker again. Say…" Kevin's face looked up. "This Mr. Parker wouldn't be one of your family, would it?"

"God, I hope not!" Parker breathed. "What was in the letter?"

"Something about the Grüen twins and test results, and intentions to make sure they make it to America. He says 'The parents and sister have been disposed of, as you requested, so that all emotional ties to family or kin have been severed with the exception of the twin-bond' — whatever that was all about…"

The voice in the back of her head whispered urgently and interpreted the letter for what it must have told her foster father, and Miss Parker leaned suddenly into her hand as her stomach turned. "Listen to me, Kevin. If Sydney comes back, I want you to call me immediately. Do you know if he has his cell phone with him?"

Kevin rose and checked. "No, it's still here, on the charger."

"Damn!" Her mind was awhirl. Where WOULD he go after finding out… "You stay put. I'll have Mr. Ikeda there early, and you stay there. Don't go out and try to find him yourself. This is…" She took a breath. "I know he was hoping to help you find your past, Kevin," she said kindly. "But what has happened instead is that he found a piece of his own — and it's a nightmare."

"But I don't see him mentioned in either of these letters…" Kevin complained softly.

"'The Grüen twins' — I'll bet you anything that Grüen was Sydney's father's name, and that Sydney and Jacob changed it once they came to America to something similar in sound, like Green," she explained quickly. "Sydney was a twin, Kevin. He had a brother, Jacob — he died about ten years ago."

Kevin read the line again. "The parents and sister have been disposed of, as you requested, so that all emotional ties to family or kin have been severed with the exception of the twin-bond." Finally he saw it. "Oh my! You don't think…"

"Right now I just want to find Sydney," Miss Parker said urgently. "Put that paperwork together so I can look at it when I stop by there on my way home. But stay put — and keep Deb with you. I don't want to have to come looking after either of you two as well."

"Yes, ma'am." Kevin could appreciate the need to keep things as under control as possible.

Miss Parker hung up the phone and put her face in her hands. "Oh, my God, Syd! What did they do to you?"

"I've run the names we got through the database three times now — there's no evidence anywhere that this Ping Xing-Li or Hsu Mei-Chiang have anything to do with Chinese Intelligence," Sylvie Gotham said in frustration, flopping a file folder down on the desk of her supervisor. "They aren't in the database, they aren't on a watch list — hell, other than relatively new information on them from INS, there's no sign they exist at all."

"What do you think?" Chuck Whelan asked her frankly. "Do we send out people to question these two, or do we try to dig into their pasts again first?"

Sylvie tossed back her blonde hair with a practiced hand. "To be honest, I think I'd rather do a bit more digging first. We have people in place there — if two agents of the PRC – especially pretty female ones – were going to be slipped into the country THAT quietly, we'd have known about it months ago."

Chuck nodded. "There's a buzz this morning on the Internet about somebody attempting to get INS to take a couple of Chinese women into custody from the Centre — only to find out the ladies in question were not only in the country legally, but valued employees of the Centre. I guess between phone calls to Capitol Hill and the INS, the Chairman over there has raised holy hell and put blocks under it."

"You think these were the same women?" Sylvie gaped.

"I called a pal over there. Yup. Same ones." Chuck leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. "I think I smell a rat — and a fairly large one at that."

Sylvie nodded agreement.

"I want you to find out who was the one who suggested we investigate these women — was it a bonafide report coming in from the field, rumor, whatever. And I want to know the source."

"Gotcha, Chief." The pretty blonde swung around on her heels and walked from the glassed-in office. Chuck watched her leave with a gleaming and appreciative eye, then bent back down to his paperwork with a sigh.

He could dream, couldn't he?

Phil Baldwin looked around his comfortable apartment, engraving every detail into his mind. A quick call back to work had uncovered the fact that there were serious questions about the validity of the report of Chinese Intelligence agents at work at the Centre – especially considering the abortive INS raid there just that morning. His friend had told him that at least one agent had asked her where he had gone. That meant that somebody had remembered that it was he who had related the suspicion – and so that it would be he that would be sought for questioning at the very least.

It had been a stupid mistake to have suggested anything to his own people so soon after talking to INS, he admitted, but then, this whole situation seemed to be progressing in anything but a predictable manner. Under normal circumstances, when INS got called in, there was no question as to their authority or justification for their arrests. And the NSA had been incredibly suspicious of all foreign nationals since that bombing attempt in San Francisco the year before, so for them to hesitate going after Chinese citizens NOW was out of the ordinary.

Under normal circumstances, if everything would have gone according to plan, his planting of the rumor with NSA in conjunction with the INS arrests would simply have assured the ladies in question of a quick and quiet jet trip back where they had come from. Nobody would have been hurt – except the Centre, a little. Just enough to let them know that it didn't pay to not cooperate with the American government when it made urgent requests.

But no – the Centre had had the documentation of Lyle's cuties all corrected and updated just in time to ruin his little scheme and get him in very deep in trouble. And now, that meant that he would have to leave his beautiful apartment with all its expensive and customized furnishings and appointments before his own people came looking for him.

There was a small metal box from the lower drawer of his nightstand that he'd fetched up to the bed and opened. In it were several bundles of hundred dollar bills, set aside for just such a contingency a long time ago. Curtis and Burns had never bothered to check the books he kept on the funding sent off to the Centre for their projects – they'd never miss the ten or twenty thousand dollars that had slowly accumulated over the years.

Soon there was a suitcase on the bed carefully filled with clothing, small personal effects and mementos. He couldn't take it all with him – he knew better than to even try – so he just packed that which would either incriminate him even more than before or that which he valued for sentimental reasons.

There was a fishing cabin up in the mountains that he'd gone to for vacation over the years – it would be hotter than hell up there at this time of year, but nobody would think of looking for him there. With a long, final look around, he carried his suitcase and an additional duffle bag with items he didn't want to leave behind out to his SUV and climbed behind the wheel. It was a several hours' drive to White Cloud – and the roads were twisting and dark closer to the lake. He needed to get moving.

"Hi," Deb smiled at Kevin as she walked into the house and found him coming from the back of the house to greet her, only her smile faded some as she noticed the worry on his face. "What's the matter?"

"I thought you were Sydney," he explained as he skidded to a halt. "He's gone."

"What do you mean 'he's gone?'" she asked with a frown. "Grandpa doesn't just take off without telling anybody…"

"Well, he did this time," Kevin told her, his worried frown still firmly plastered on his face. "He even has Miss Parker worried."

Even as he mentioned her name, Miss Parker knocked and then came through the front door, followed by a very early Mr. Ikeda. "Show me the papers he was looking at," she demanded of Kevin without stopping to say hello to either young person.

Kevin blinked at the officious way she was behaving, then led her back into the den and the coffee table with its scattered ancient German documents. Miss Parker sat down on the daybed and picked up one paper after another, then frowned as she picked up a paper with a photograph of a very young and very unhappy-looking boy. She looked at the name: Grüen, Sydney Karl. She looked at the letterhead and saw that this was an official document from Dachau. His entrance form, she knew with a jolt. Another document with a photograph was with it, a virtually identical picture affixed: Grüen, Jakob Michel.

She let the documents drop back onto the table where she'd found them as she reached for the ancient folder in which they had been stored all these years. A spot of crystallized and ineffective glue was all that was left of the label holding the project name under which this had been stored. Curious, she reached for the next folder and examined the tab. "Genius" was all it said.

"What about the notes you found?" she looked up at the young Pretender. He pointed and she picked up the two thin sheets of paper and read them both. The implications were clear – she knew exactly what these documents had proven to her old friend. She dug in her pocket for her cell phone and dialed.

"Sam, me."

"Well…?"

"He's gone alright – and I know why. I want a very quiet sweep of all the bars in town, emphasis on QUIET. Syd's not going to be in good shape, and I don't want the might of the Centre charging through doors at him."

"I've already got three teams ready to move – all I needed was a word of where to send them. But I've got Mei-Chiang with me – so I'm leaving this in Chip's hands unless things get dicier."

She listened and then nodded. "Fine. Have Harrison call me at home when he's finished the sweep. Oh, and you might want to send a team up to White Cloud. He might just be upset enough not to stop driving until he gets up there."

"That's a helluva long way for him to go at this hour. Are you sure…"

"This is REALLY bad, Sam. I've seen what lesser news has done to him in the past, and it wasn't pretty – this is bound to have knocked him for a loop but good."

"What the hell is this about?"

"His past – and what landed him and his brother in Dachau during the war. Looks like there may have been Centre involvement…"

"Oh brother!" Sam was sickened. "They go THAT far back screwing with people's lives?"

"Looks like it. And I think it caught Sydney completely by surprise." She sighed. "He doesn't talk about those days – I think he's tried to forget what he saw and went through. The last time anything like this came up, he ended up putting a gun in a man's face and damned near killing him."

"Our mild-mannered shrink?" Sam was aghast. "You're kidding!"

"At the time," she said carefully, "I told him that he was justified – that the man he'd captured was a monster. He didn't do it, though…" she added quickly, seeing the look of sickened outrage on Kevin's face. "The man ended up being given to the Israelis for trial on war crimes."

"And you think he'd end up in a bar?"

She shrugged. "He's done it before."

"You don't suppose he could have headed in the direction of Albany, could he?"

"God, Sam, I honestly don't know. Let's start our search locally first, then check further out if that doesn't pan out." She sighed again. "I'll call Michelle, though, and warn her to be on the lookout for him and to call us if he shows up there."

"I'll call Harrison later for an update," Sam told her. "Hang in there, we'll find him."

"Thanks." She disconnected the call and stared blankly at Kevin for a moment.

"Did Sydney really almost kill a man?" the young Pretender wanted to know.

Miss Parker looked at him with understanding. There was so much about his mentor – about all of them – that he simply didn't understand. "Yes – and I still think he'd have been doing the world a favor." She thought for a moment, watching Kevin's face fold into disapproval. "Tell me, you aren't too terribly worried about what has happened to the man who was your mentor for all those years, are you? What was his name…"

"Grey," Kevin replied with a sour look. "And no, I couldn't care less if the man lives or dies. Why?"

She nodded. "Well, this Doctor Krieg that Sydney almost killed would have been his keeper during the war, much like Grey was your keeper. Only what he put Sydney and his brother through – the things that went on around them on a daily basis – would have made your life in that isolated house of your look like a paradise by comparison. Have you ever studied what went on in Nazi concentration or death camps?"

"No!" Kevin was appalled. "Sydney was in one of those?"

She nodded again. "Now do you see why we have to find him?"

Kevin nodded. He had a feeling that he would spend time on the Internet after supper doing some research so that he could understand his mentor better when he got back – not entirely sure what he would enjoy the task.

"Miss Parker?" Deb had been waiting patiently for her to get off the phone and be done talking to Kevin. "Is Grandpa alright?"

Miss Parker shook her head. "I'm not sure, Deb – but I don't think so. At least, not right now."

"Alright," Tyler said in a determined voice as he came out of his office door and once more found Xing-Li still patiently typing away on reports. "It's after five, and it's time for you to be done for the day."

"I just have a little more to do…"

"No," he bent and pulled her away from her keyboard. "It can wait until morning. This has been a very trying day for you – you can use your rest." He nodded at the computer keyboard. "Shut it down."

"I'm OK…"

Tyler put himself right in front of her. "No, you're not. You've been quiet and acting like you're afraid you're going to get kicked or something all day. C'mon," he smiled at her. "I'll give you a lift home."

"You don't have to do that," Xing-Li told him as she finally conceded and moved to her keyboard to save her work and shut down her terminal. He was right, she admitted to herself, she WAS tired. And working all day in fear of another set of officers storming into her office to drag her away had been very wearing.

"Yes, I do," he countered kindly. "I watched two complete asses scare the living sh…" He swallowed the invective back. "I don't like what they did to you – how frightened they made you all day. I'd like a chance to put a much more pleasant end to the day for you."

"Mr. Tyler…"

"My name's Cody – when we're not on the clock, I'd rather you use that. Everybody calls me Tyler, and it would be nice to know ONE person who calls me by name when I'm not at work."

He saw the almond eyes open in surprise. "But that wouldn't be proper, sir," Xing-Li complained quietly. "I am only a secretary…"

"Does that mean that we can't be friends?" Tyler asked with a sad note in his voice.

"No… but…"

"Good. Then get your purse and coat – I'm taking you out to dinner."

"Mr. Tyler…"

"Uh-unh," he corrected gently. "Cody. We're off the clock – both of us."

"It wouldn't be proper, sir," she repeated firmly.

He stared at her for a moment, then began to smile. "You can be quite stubborn, can't you?"

"I know my place, sir."

"You know," Tyler leaned toward her as she finally fished her purse from her desk and locked it, "I don't hold a lot to rules that stand in people's way of being friends. Your place is wherever you are – until or unless you hear differently from Miss Parker. And," he held up a finger to prevent her from arguing with him again, "I'll run this past her tomorrow morning, just to make sure that neither of us will have to face that later on. Until then, we keep our working relationship above-board – and our after-hours relationship is nobody's business but our own. Agreed?"

Xing-Li blushed as she felt her boss commandeer an elbow and escort her gently down the hall toward the exit. How could she argue with someone that determined? "Very well," she said finally very softly. In truth, she liked the feel of his hand at her elbow. "But I'm not very hungry, sir."

"OK," he said easily, determined not to let her shut down the evening. "How about some ice cream?"

"Ice cream?" she giggled. Nobody had ever bought her just ice cream before.

"Yeah, just a little something for someone who isn't all that hungry." Tyler's eyes twinkled merrily. "Something small. What do you say?"

How could she refuse? "OK," she said finally. He was evidently determined to take responsibility for helping her feel better that evening. At the very least, she could let him buy her a little dessert. It didn't cost either of them any honor to allow such a small thing.

Mei-Chiang found that chopping the meat and vegetables for dinner that night was almost as soothing an activity as any she'd undertaken all day. Sam had offered to bring some of his spaghetti sauce out of the freezer so she didn't have to work so hard, but she'd assured him that cooking was a relaxation for her. Besides, she hadn't prepared her famous sweet and sour shrimp for him yet – and she'd bought the ingredients the night before. It needed to be made while the shrimp were fresh.

She knew that Sam was worried about something, and that he'd received one call from Chip Harrison, his assistant, since they got home. He came into the kitchen as she began the process of putting the vegetables into the wok in order and cooking them after giving the shrimp their initial cooking and sniffed appreciatively. "This smells wonderful," he commented as he came up behind her.

"It's one of my favorite dishes to cook," she admitted, starting to add the sauce ingredients and making the kitchen smell like a restaurant. It felt good – safe – to have him at her back with his hands resting gently on her shoulders and holding her as she moved back and forth adding the ingredients in order and stirring the mixture in the wok so that it kept boiling and didn't burn. "Is something the matter?" she asked him carefully.

"A friend of mine has taken off without telling anyone where he was going," Sam answered in mild frustration. "His health hasn't been good lately, and he left behind some people who are very worried about him."

"He works at the Centre?" she asked, dishing first some rice to two plates and then covering the rice with the simmering, savory-smelling entrée.

"He was at the Centre long before I came," he answered, taking his plate and hers and carrying them both to the table. "He was there when Miss Parker was a small girl – when Jarod was just a boy."

"Jarod?" She brought him a fork and spoon while giving herself wooden chopsticks.

"You'll meet him soon enough, I'm sure," Sam smiled at her. "He and Miss Parker will be getting married not long after he gets back from California."

"I think I remember him a little," Mei-Chiang mused, chewing her first bite slowly. "Tall? Dark hair?"

"Yup. This friend I'm speaking of virtually raised both Miss Parker and Jarod."

"What happened?"

Sam shook his head. "I'm not sure. I'm just hoping that we find him quickly – Miss Parker is very worried and protective of him – they've been family for years now."

"Been family? I don't understand," Mei-Chiang said, looking up at him with confused eyes.

"You have to understand – there's a sense of family among some of us who have been with the Centre for a while," Sam tried to explain. "Miss Parker, of course, and Sydney – the friend who's missing – he's like her father. Then there's Broots, who's kinda like her little brother…"

"Are you in this 'family' too?" she wanted to know.

"Miss Parker seems to think so," he answered with a little hesitation.

"It's like an extended family," she nodded, understanding entirely. "A very Chinese concept."

"Yeah, I suppose so," he agreed with her, surprised she accepted the explanation so easily.

They ate in silence for a while until suddenly, the events of the day that she'd managed to keep pushed away behind other things that needed to be thought of first would no longer stay repressed. Mei-Chiang put her chopsticks down and folded her hands in her lap. "I was so frightened," she admitted in a very shaky voice. "I thought they were going to take me away – that I'd never see you again – that they would send me back home…"

"It would never happen," he reassured her, putting down his fork and sliding his chair around the corner so that he could put his arm around her and pull her close. "I told you, wild tigers can't take you away from me now – I sure as hell wasn't going to let any stupid…"

"They were police officers," she cried. "They would have hurt you – arrested you too…"

"But they didn't," he soothed into her ear, his hands rubbing large and comforting circles into her back. "Between Tyler and Miss Parker, they didn't get anywhere – and you're right here, where you belong."

Mei-Chiang leaned hard against her giant economy sized fiancé and shivered. The fact was that the officer had had her by the arm and had dragged her away from her desk before she hardly had a moment to think. "I cannot go back," she tried to explain in a voice that grew shakier by the moment. "I would have nothing…"

Sam wrapped his arms as tightly around her as he dared. "You don't have to go back — I'll take care of you," he promised vehemently. "Once you are my wife, they'll never be able to come after you like that again." He bent and folded his large body around her as protectively as he could. "You are the center of my world, Mei. I love you."

"Hold me," she whispered finally, clinging to the front of his shirt,

"I'm here, Mei. I'm here. I have you." He kissed her cheek and her forehead and then finally let his lips capture hers in a passionate clasp. She returned the kiss desperately, letting his touch and passion help banish from her mind for the moment the coldness of fear that had invaded that morning.

"What? Chip?"

"No, it's me," Jarod answered with a frown. "What's going on — you're expecting a call from someone?"

"Jarod," Miss Parker breathed and closed her eyes. "Sydney's gone AWOL."

"What?!"

"Do you remember my telling you that he and Kevin were going through the old hardcopy data archives to sort out the garbage from the…"

"Yes, I remember." Jarod's voice was brisk. "What happened?"

Miss Parker felt her stomach turn again, just as it did every time she thought about just what it was Sydney had found. "He found records dating back to World War II — notes between Dr. Werner Krieg and my grandfather… about him and Jacob. From the looks of it, my grandfather had a hand in his landing in Dachau — and in the murder of the rest of his family except Jacob."

"Oh my God!" Jarod, more than anybody else, knew exactly what such information would have done to his mentor. "How long has he been gone?"

She checked her watch. "Probably about four hours now, as best we can figure. The sweeper in front of the house didn't think anything was amiss — evidently Syd just… drove off."

"This is a bad one, Missy," Jarod said, suddenly wishing with all his heart that he was over in Delaware again. "I don't think he ever really DID get over what he went through during the war — I know he was loathe to even let me see the tattoo on his arm. If you're right, and the Centre orchestrated that part of his life the way it orchestrated mine — and yours and Kevin's…"

"Can you think of ANYWHERE that he'd go…" she implored.

"White Cloud, maybe… to be with Jacob," Jarod suggested. "Jacob would probably be the only person Sydney could feel he could talk to about this that would understand."

"I asked Sam to send a team up there," she nodded. "And to quietly check the bars in town. Last time Sydney's past blindsided him like this, he ended up trying to drink himself under the table."

"Somehow, I'm not surprised," Jarod said tiredly. "Look, keep me informed."

"I'm sorry," she said suddenly. "I completely forgot that it was you who called me. How are YOU?"

"Better than you at the moment, but not by much now," he replied. "I was calling to tell you that my court date for Sprite has been moved up to the day after tomorrow — and that I'll be back in Delaware by the weekend."

Miss Parker sat down on her couch, weak with relief. "God, Jarod, I'm glad. I need you HERE — I don't know if I can handle all this by myself anymore."

"Five days," Jarod promised, putting his arm around his little daughter and holding her just a little closer. "I'll be there in five days. By then, Sydney will be home again, and everything will be quiet again…"

"Sydney isn't the only crisis we have simmering," she informed him tiredly. "The military — or evidently a maverick side of the military that contracted with us for some of the more objectionable work the Centre could do — is objecting to our closing those projects down and shipping everything off to the Pentagon. They're even trying to work on the scientists directly — convince them to restart things on the Q.T. The one that refused was attacked…"

"Have you been in touch with the Pentagon?" Jarod asked quietly. "They usually take a pretty dim view to that kind of thing."

"Tyler's working with an Air Force colonel, I know. We caught another one trying to break into that scientist's house last night — and then this morning INS tried to raid us and arrest my secretary and Tyler's as undocumented."

Jarod shook his head. "It sounds like life is never dull at the top of the Centre heap."

"Hurry home," she cried softly. "I don't want to do this alone anymore."

"I'll be there as soon as I can, I promise," he swore. "And I'm sure you'll find Sydney. It might take a while — he's not the kind who will wander too far from the family he has now, Missy. You and Davy are his whole world, and you know it. Deb too. He may take some time for himself — and God knows, considering what he just discovered, he deserves it — but he'll get his wits together and come back eventually."

"I sure hope so," she worried. "He's important to me too, you know… I'm just afraid that he'll hurt himself before he gets his wits together again. I don't know what I'd do…"

"I know," he soothed. "Hang in there. Don't worry about things that haven't happened, Missy."

"I love you, Jarod. I miss you."

"I miss you too, Missy. I'll be there before you know it."

She shook her head. She needed him NOW — but to have a definite timeframe to work with was an improvement. "I'll see you this weekend — Sunday?"

"Depends on how fast I can pack," he smiled. "Sprite doesn't have much, and I've been kind of going through things and deciding what I just can't live without and what I can leave behind. I'm not selling the house — I'm just going to let Ethan take it over."

"That sounds like a good idea," she smiled. "But listen. I've got to get off the line in case Sam or Chip Harrison call about Syd."

"Keep me informed, Missy. I care about him too."

"I will, Jarod." She took a deep breath. "I'll talk to you later."

"Good night," he said softly, then heard her disconnect the call. Sydney wasn't stupid, although he WAS far more emotional than most people realized. When it came to his past, he was both emotional and intensely private. Jarod could still remember the look on his mentor's face when he'd asked him questions about his internment by the Nazis — it was a haunted look that he himself had worn for many years after his own escape.

Sydney was a master at several things, survival at the Centre being only one of the more noteworthy. But above all, he was a master at hiding his own bleeding psychic wounds — from himself as well as everyone else. It had made him a gifted therapist, but it had been an Achilles' Heel as well.

Sydney would be all right in the end, Jarod was certain — but he suspected that the road ahead of his former mentor would not be a smooth or pleasant one.

Deb stood in the arcadia doorway watching Kevin practicing the flowing movements that Mr. Ikeda was teaching him. She felt more than a little lost and abandoned to her own devices. Miss Parker had encouraged the two of them to fix themselves something to eat for supper before leaving for home, and then Mr. Ikeda had taken Kevin into the back yard almost immediately after the meal, leaving her to clean up the kitchen as always.

In a way, she could see that the young Pretender and the Japanese bodyguard had forged a bond between them — and that whatever it was that Ikeda was teaching Kevin seemed to be helping the young man stay calm and focused while his mentor was missing. She, however, didn't have that stability. It had been Grandpa Sydney himself that had given her stability while her father was laid up in the hospital, and especially since her time in California — and now he was gone.

During supper, Kevin had explained to her what it was that Sydney had found and what it meant. She was as shocked by the revelation as Kevin had been — she had never suspected her grandfather had ever had anything quite that bad happen to him. It had never occurred to her that when he would tell his stories, there had been a consistent and huge gap of time between the tales he would tell of himself and Jacob as very small children and the tales of himself and Jacob in college in America. She'd studied a little about the Second World War in school — and the idea that he might have been in one of those horrible death camps was almost sickening.

She moved back into the den and sat down on the daybed, then tipped over into Grandpa's pillows. It seemed as if everywhere she went, bad things were happening to her and to those she loved.

It was nearly dark by the time Kevin and Ikeda came in from their practice. "I shall be in the living room, Kevin-san," the diminutive bodyguard said gently, taking one look at Deb's face as she sat back up again and reading in her expression her wish to talk to his young student — alone. He carefully lead Kevin's glance down to her face as well and then took his leave.

"Are you OK?" Kevin asked her, coming over to sit next to her on the daybed.

"I keep thinking about Grandpa, wondering where he is and if he's all right…" she said, leaning. "I didn't get to talk to him this morning, you know…"

Kevin lifted his arm and drew it around her shoulder. "I know you didn't," he remembered. "But you got to see your Dad today. Didn't that help some?"

"Some," she admitted, then sighed. "He says that there's a chance that he'll never walk again."

There wasn't much that Kevin could say to that, so he just tightened his arm around her.

"I just feel like the world is waiting to fall in on me again," she said finally, the need to put it out in words for someone else to hear and comment on forcing it.

"The world isn't waiting to fall on you," Kevin soothed, kissing the side of her head gently. "Everything will be better again when Sydney is home again. We're just feeling his absence."

"I don't feel safe," she clung to him. "Grandpa always makes me feel so safe."

"Mr. Ikeda is very good at what he does," Kevin reassured her in a firm voice. "And I can help protect you too, you know." He hoped he sounded confident. "Nobody's after us — you don't have to worry, Deb. And between Mr. Ikeda and me, we can keep you safe. I promise."

Deb wrapped her arm around him and nestled down on his chest. "Maybe if we watched TV or something — anything to get my mind off of Grandpa being gone…"

Kevin leaned forward slightly and caught up the television remote and settled back with Deb held close before pointing it at the appliance. "What do you want to watch?" he asked curiously. "I can never make any sense of the shows."

"Anything," she answered, and watched him flip slowly through the channels until she saw some actors she was familiar with. "There. Let's watch that," she said. Kevin tossed the remote onto the coffee table and put his other arm around her waist to hold her closer as they slowly became immersed in the plot of the movie.

"Talk to me."

"We've checked all the bars and lounges in Blue Cove and in Dover, Mr. Harrison. There's no sign of Dr. Green anywhere."

"Damn!" Harrison swore softly. Considering that both Mr. Atlee and Miss Parker had called twice in the last hour to see if there had been any word, the whereabouts of the missing psychiatrist obviously had hit top priority — and he didn't like to be coming up empty on something this important. "OK, if Miss Parker thinks the good doctor might be climbing into a bottle, check the liquor stores in the area and see if anybody has sold anything to him."

"Do you have any idea how many…"

"I don't want to hear it," Harrison told the tired sweeper. "Just get to it and check back in as soon as you have something to report." He disconnected the call, then pulled out a notebook and dialed the number on the first page.

"Fisher here," was the almost immediate response.

"Aren't you guys to White Cloud yet?"

"Just getting there, sir — the road's a little dangerous up here in the dark, you know."

"How much further until you can see his cabin?"

"It's just a mile or so ahead."

"I'll stay on the line with you then," Harrison told him. "We came up empty from the bars."

"Wonderful," Fisher let slide his comment first without thinking about to whom he was speaking. "Sorry, sir," he swallowed just a moment later.

"Stow it. Where are you?"

"Just about there…" Fisher sounded like he was stretching. "Nope. His car's nowhere in sight, and there isn't a light on in the cabin. He's not here."

"Get out and walk the perimeter of the place — check the locks to make sure the place is secure. I'll hang on."

Harrison could hear the sounds of walking, and then the two sweepers calling soft instructions to each other as they moved in on the rustic cabin. A few moments later, he heard the sound of a doorknob being roughly rattled and then footsteps on wood. "No, sir. The place is tight as a virgin's…"

"Fisher…"

"All locked up, sir. He's not here." Fisher paused. "What do you want us to do now?"

"Head back to the barn, boys. Then take tomorrow off — you'll have earned it. Drive carefully."

"Damn," Fisher swore and then disconnected the call. "It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't darker than the ace of spades out here," he told his partner. "We're to head home."

"Just shut up and get in the car," Davis grumbled. "You can help me keep an eye out to make sure we get home safely. Are you sure we can't stop along the way and put it on the company card?"

Fisher shrugged as he slid into the passenger seat. "I'm fine with that, provided YOU'RE the one who writes the expense report and tries to justify the cost of the room."

Phil Baldwin grimaced as his stomach cramped down yet again. He should never have stopped at that roadside stand and bought the hotdog. He knew better — hot days like this could wreak havoc and make for all kinds of food poisoning in such places with little or no refrigeration. He could only hope to make it up to his cabin before he'd need to park himself in his bathroom for a serious and long visit with the toilet.

A suddenly excruciating cramp caught him by surprise, making him nearly double over behind the steering wheel. He groaned as he forced his right foot to push down on the brake pedal and slow the SUV's progress on the steep incline. Only one more mountainside to get down and another to climb before he'd be at White Cloud Lake. He felt the vehicle want to roll forward down the hill and closed his eyes and wiped at his eyes to get the tears of pain out of them so he could see more clearly.

When he finally felt as if he was more in control of himself again, he eased the pressure from the brake and felt the car begin its downward movement. The road ahead of him was twisting and dark — in the daylight a delightful drive through the thick forest, in the nighttime a grueling and dangerous ribbon of black asphalt with only faded reflective white paint running down the center of the road to show him the way.

Baldwin toyed with reaching for the now-warm cup of 7-up that he'd bought to go with the hotdog all those many miles back. Maybe the drink would help calm things down just long enough… He bent forward a little — just enough to wake up his rebellious stomach into a full and sharp cramp.

"That wouldn't be Dr. Green's car, would it?" Fisher asked as he saw the flickering reflection of headlights through the trees.

"I don't think so," Davis answered finally. "That car's white, and an SUV. Dr. Green drives a black Lincoln."

"Well, whoever that guy is, he's not doing too well on this road," Fisher commented as he saw the slow-moving car slip across the center line even as it lined up along the flat bottom of the gorge to make a run at the next hill. "Watch him…"

"I'm trying," Davis yelled as he suddenly had to jerk the wheel when the SUV slid across the white line again. The Centre sedan buried its nose into the cut in the side of the hill, making the rocks and dirt fall noisily on the hood and roof.

The SUV didn't even swerve, but fell from the other side of the road, gaining momentum as it continued downward until it smashed headlong into the trunk of an ancient tree.

And then the mountain road was silent.

Feedback, please:


	15. Dark Revelations

Resolutions – 15

Dark Revelations

by MMB

Crystal sighed and continued to put one foot in front of the other, wending her way home from the park in which she had started to spend so much of her days lately. Scooter would be wondering where she was, she knew — and he had a temper that didn't allow for much latitude, so she needed to get back soon. She'd made her rounds, stopping at the dumpsters at the back of the three restaurants in town and culling several wrappers' worth of discarded food that would keep them both from starving for another day. The two bundles of newspaper that she carried under her arm smelled actually tasty today.

She looked both ways before crossing the street diagonally toward the huge and mostly empty warehouse that she and Scooter had called their 'home' for several weeks now. Scooter was the one who had insisted that they come to this tiny seaside village. The fact that he owed most of the loan sharks first in Boston and now Dover more money than he would ever be able to repay was ample enough reason to try to just disappear for a while. Life with Scooter hadn't been easy, but then, he had been the only person who actually would talk to her back in the days when she was a new runaway and had just arrived in Boston. And she'd long since gotten used to the idea that the price for him 'protecting' her and 'taking care' of her was being expected to put up with his rough and painful advances whenever he got his urges.

The warehouse where they had found a refuge wasn't far from the edge of the ocean — it sat next to a wharf and pier at which water deliveries could be made, although in the two weeks since they'd been there, there had been no deliveries at all. As she walked down the asphalt next to the metal skin of the building, she stared in surprise at the sight of a dark sedan parked against the curbing on the ocean side of the street. She kept walking — the loosened piece of metal sheeting through which she would get into the warehouse was on the opposite side of the building — and the closer she got, the more she started to hear voices. Angry voices. One voice — Scooter's. She broke into a trot but skidded to a stop when she rounded the corner.

"Whaddya mean, you don't have any more money, old man?" Scooter yelled and lashed out with a foot into the side of a man lying prone on the ground in front of him. "A measly twenty bucks?"

"Scooter!" she yelled and ran toward him. "Stop!"

"Shut up!" he turned on her. "This ain't none of your business."

"What are you going to do — kill the guy because he didn't have enough money in his wallet?" she asked in a mocking tone. "Why don't you just take his car keys? That car has GOT to be worth…"

Scooter bent down and rifled through the man's pockets and straightened up again with a key ring in hand. "You comin'?" he asked after giving the man on the ground another foot in the belly. "We should be able to get all the way to Atlanta with this…"

"What the hell do I want in Atlanta?" Crystal asked, one hand on her hip. "And I thought you said…"

"Hey," he growled, pulling her close with a rough hand on her arm, "I got me some friends down there who'd help us set up so nice — maybe cut us in on a little dealing business that would get us some money…"

"Drugs?" Crystal pulled her arm out of his grasp. "I told you I wasn't having anything to do with drugs, Scooter. And if that's what you're going to Atlanta to do, you can damned well go to Atlanta alone."

"You'll do what I tell you," he grabbed her again, harder. "Just like always. I found you and took care of you — you OWE me."

"No!" she jerked away once more and backed up. "What are you going to do, beat me up to make me come with you? Well, forget it. Take the fuckin' car and go."

Scooter pointed at the bundles under her other arm. "At least you can give me my supper…"

Crystal rolled her eyes and grabbed one of the bundles and thrust it out at him. "Fine — if it will make you leave any faster…"

Scooter took the bundle and then stepped forward. With a hand moving faster than she could avoid, he slugged her hard in the face with his fist, making her tumble backwards. "You stupid bitch. I shoulda left you layin' in the gutter, where I found you. Stay here with the village idiot, then. You deserve each other." He swaggered back to the car, started the motor with a loud roar and spun the tires on the asphalt peeling rubber backing up toward the street.

Crystal lay on her back on the pavement for a long moment, the blow to her cheek having exploded into her head with the power of a bomb. Tears were pouring from her eyes, and yet when she moved her face to grimace it was like the whole side of her face wanted to explode again. She moved a hand up to cradle her cheek with a sound that was half sob, half moan. Not far away, she could hear the man Scooter had mugged beginning to groan too and slowly begin to move. He started coughing, and then the next thing Crystal heard was his retching miserably.

For a long moment, both of them simply worked by themselves at moving beyond the pain that Scooter had inflicted on them. Then finally Crystal sat up slowly on an elbow. "You OK, mister?"

"Actually, no," he replied after a long moment spent coughing again. He rolled back toward her, and she could see that he was an older gentleman with unstylishly long silver hair that was thinning considerably back from his forehead. "What about you?" His voice was slightly slurred and had an unidentifiable accent that inexplicably made Crystal think of a James Bond movie.

"I've been better," she answered dully. As much as she was glad that Scooter wasn't around anymore, she was frightened. She was alone again. The last time she'd been on her own like this had been that first day in Boston. Confused and disoriented, she'd been found by a gang who had spent the better part of the next two days passing her from one to the next before they got tired of her crying and dumped her into a gutter. Then Scooter and his friend Cricket had found her, and her life had improved some — not a lot, but at least a little. While the same treatment at the hands of a gang here wasn't likely, there was no guarantee that Scooter wouldn't be back for her after all — and he could be almost as bad that way sometimes, especially now that Cricket was gone…

She stared at the stranger on his backside and coughing miserably in the street with trepidation. Now what?

Fisher rolled his head and groaned — the impact of the car into the side of the embankment had almost smashed his head into the dashboard. The headlights of the Centre sedan were no longer glowing, so it was incredibly dark. Still, he reached for the overhead light and fumbled around the edges for the switch. The interior of the car was suddenly lit by the small light on the ceiling of the car.

"Are you all right?" he asked in concern as Davis moved his head against his hands at the wheel and groaned.

Davis turned, and Fisher grimaced. Davis must have hit the steering wheel with his forehead, for there was a cut above the left eye that was bleeding rather badly. Fisher dug in his breast pocket for his handkerchief and folded it and pressed it against his partner's forehead. "Ow — shit that hurts!"

"We'll be lucky if that's all that's wrong with either of us," Fisher answered dryly. "At least you hit the embankment. I think the other guy went off the side of the road."

"Why don't you call the Centre and get them to send out some help — or at least contact the local authorities," Davis suggested, leaning his head back against the headrest. "What if the other guy's hurt worse than we are?"

"He probably is," Fisher replied, pulling his cell phone from his pocket and dialing. He listened, then disconnected and tried dialing again. "Shit! There's no signal."

"Wouldn't you know it?" Davis would have shook his head in frustration, but his neck was starting to get sore and he had a beaut of a headache. "So, wise guy, what do we do now?"

"You hurt anywhere else?" Fisher asked in concern.

Davis closed his eyes. "Don't think so," he replied cautiously.

"Will you be OK if I took off and left you here for a while?"

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Fisher looked at his partner with eyes narrowed in thought. "Top of the mountain. Maybe my cell phone will have reception up there. You need help, and so does our mystery kamikaze driver."

"Go," Davis waved the hand that wasn't holding the handkerchief to his forehead. "The sooner you get going, the sooner we can get some help in here."

Fisher looked at his partner for a moment, then reached for the glove box. "We DID pack a flashlight, didn't we?"

"In the trunk, probably," Davis told him with a sigh and closed his eyes. "God, my head feels like it wants to roll off my shoulders."

Fisher pushed the button in the glove box that opened the trunk, then put a hand on his partner's shoulder. "I'll be back as soon as I can, Frank." Davis nodded very gingerly, and Fisher reached for the handle to the passenger door. With another long glance at his partner, he pushed the door open and climbed out.

The emergency kit in the trunk did indeed have a high-powered flashlight — one that lit up the area brightly. With it, Fisher would be able to follow the faded white line up the side of the mountain. He slammed the trunk closed and patted the roof of the sedan as he walked past. "I'll be back in just a bit," he told his partner once more, then began hiking up the steep asphalt incline.

He reached the spot where skid marks showed where the SUV had headed off the pavement and over the edge of the road, and Fisher walked carefully to the edge and peered over. Casting his light into the brush, he was able to make out the trail of damage left behind by the careening vehicle and the white metal lying crumpled against a tree part way down into the gorge.

Shaking his head, he turned back to the road and continued up the dark asphalt path. For Davis' sake, if not for the sake of any poor bastard left trapped in that white SUV, he needed to get to where his cell phone could work.

"You have the sweetest little girl, Jarod," Margaret told her son as she walked quietly from the hallway and the bedroom where she'd just tucked Ginger into bed.

"I know," Jarod grinned at her from the couch, where he was sorting through papers. "And to think she's almost mine at last!"

"I've been thinking about that," Margaret watched him for a long moment and then moved to sit down in a chair not far away. "And I've been thinking about your going away."

"Mom, we've talk about this before," Jarod looked up from his sorting. "I love Missy…"

She waved her hand. "I know that — and I honestly don't have any problems with it. Now that I've met her and gotten to know her a little bit, I think your Missy is one of the best things that has happened to you."

Jarod frowned, confused. "Then what…"

"I was wondering if you would very upset if I went back to Delaware with you?"

Jarod's mouth dropped open in utter amazement. "I thought you never wanted to set foot there again?"

She shrugged. "I didn't — not for a very long time. But you're going to be living your life there now, and you'll have two of my grandchildren there. And," she raised her chin proudly, "I think the time has come for me to get a little closure."

"Closure?"

Her blue eyes didn't flinch from his gaze. "I want to meet the man that raised my son as his own," she told him with more certainty than she was feeling inside. "I want to meet this Sydney of yours. Missy speaks so highly of him, even though she was concerned about his making Davy run SIMs…"

"He didn't MAKE Davy run SIMs, Mom," Jarod told her gently. "I told you what Missy said. Davy came to him for help — and walking Davy through a SIM of the situation was the best way Sydney knew to…"

"I know what Missy said, and I know how you feel. It's time I found out for myself." She smiled. "So what do you say? Would you mind very much if I tagged along when you take Ginger to her new home?"

"NO I don't mind," Jarod's smile was wide. "Of course I don't mind. Wait until I tell Missy…" Then his face fell slightly. "I just hope he's back when we get there."

"Back?" Margaret frowned. "I thought you said that he was laid up since knee surgery."

"He is," Jarod explained, "but he recently found out a few things about his own past — and how HIS life was messed up by the Centre when he was young." He gave his mother a sad gaze. "We evidently weren't the first family that was destroyed to serve the Centre agendas, Mom. Sydney didn't take the news very well — of course, finding out that the Nazis exterminated his family at the request of the Centre would throw just about anybody for a loop…"

"They did that?" Her mouth dropped open.

He nodded. "And right now, Missy and Sam are just trying to figure out where he went to make sure he doesn't get hurt while he's working through this latest…"

"He's OK, isn't he?" She could tell that he was worried, and once more, new evidence that many of the people she had so reviled for so long had been similarly done harm by the Centre began to soften her attitude towards them.

"I hope so…" Jarod looked back down at his pictures. "Missy depends on him utterly, Davy loves him dearly and calls him 'Grandpa' — and God knows Deb needs him desperately right now, and so does Kevin…"

"Kevin?" Margaret frowned — the name wasn't familiar.

Jarod glanced at her. "The other Pretender we liberated. You remember, I told you…"

"Oh yeah." Margaret gazed at her son, certain that he HADN'T mentioned this other former Centre victim much if at all. There was apparently a lot to this life of his on the other side of the country that she didn't know about. And she wanted to know. "So, when ARE you leaving?"

Jarod looked back down at the pile of pictures that he was sorting through — pictures that would remind him of the pieces of his life that he would be leaving behind here in California. "Depending on how quickly I can finish going through stuff, Saturday — maybe Sunday."

"You think you can pack that quickly?" Margaret was amazed.

"You know, I'm not all that attached to THINGS, Mom. I have clothes I'll want to take with me, my diplomas — these pictures. Maybe a few pieces of artwork I'll have shipped back there…" His eye sought out a couple of paintings by artists he had helped during his days on the run, and another couple that he himself had done after he'd put his real family together at last. "But Missy is talking about our taking over her father's old town house — so I'm not going to be in need of furnishings or anything, at least, not right away. And Ginger doesn't have a whole lot of stuff that will take long to pack either." He grinned at her. "How about you? Can you be packed in time?"

"I lived my life out of a suitcase for years, Jarod," she reminded him. "I'll be ready when you are."

"I'm sure Ginger will be glad to have you with us," he commented with a glance down the darkened hall toward his daughter's room. "A little more familiarity around her can't be a bad thing in a completely new place."

"Good." She nodded her head firmly. "I'll let Em know tomorrow that I'll be gone for a while — taking a vacation with you." She smiled. "Sammy will be in school anyway. This works out well."

Jarod resumed his sorting with a smile. Maybe it wouldn't be as hard to put together the two halves of his life after all.

"Can you walk?"

"Not without help, I'm afraid…"

Crystal had finally managed to regain her feet despite the ripping headache and the sensation of her eye wanting to pop out of her skull. She stumbled towards the man that Scooter had beaten. In bending toward him, she could smell the overwhelming stink of liquor on his breath. "Geez, mister — how much have you had?"

Sydney gave a brittle cough that could have been meant as a chuckle if it hadn't hurt so much. "Not enough. I can still think straight — more or less." He slowly sat up, then put a hand down to his side. Where he'd been shot weeks before, the scar tissue had torn open yet again when the young man had kicked him. "And I can feel where your young man kicked me."

"He's not MY young man," Crystal announced half-angrily as she put out a hand. "Here."

"I don't think so, my dear," the man waved her off. "But if you can help me find my crutches…"

"Oh, come on!" she growled at him. "It's too damned dark to find where Scooter tossed your crutches — if he didn't throw them into the water to begin with — and you know it." She put out her hand again. "I'm stronger than I look. Here."

Sydney looked up at her askance in the dim light. This was a tiny whippet of a girl, younger and smaller in build than his granddaughter. Still, his choices were very limited — he could either accept her offer or continue to sit in the gutter like a common drunk that had just been rolled. He finally put out a hand and took her rough little hand in his. Slowly, painfully, he managed to get up on his undamaged knee and finally lurched to his feet — nearly knocking her over in his effort to catch his balance.

"This way," Crystal said, letting the man lean heavily on her shoulder. "Just a second." She bent down for the remaining bundle of scrounged food and tucked it back under her arm before letting the man's heavy hand land back on her shoulder. Her fellow victim walked with a noticeably painful limp over to some stacked crates next to the warehouse, where he fell into a disheveled sitting position.

"Thank you," he said finally, once he'd caught his breath. "For your help now — and before."

"Yeah, well, don't mention it." The man's gratitude made Crystal feel strange — almost homesick. She moved the bundle of food from beneath her arm and began unwrapping her supper. "You want some of this?"

The mere thought of food turned Sydney's stomach. "No, thank you," he replied, leaning to the side against another, stacked packing crate. His hand went to his side again and came away sticky with blood. Jarod would be absolutely furious with him when he saw him next, he knew — and then wondered IF he would see Jarod again. Or Parker. That's right, he suddenly reminded himself brutally. Monsters don't get to see those they love — they don't deserve it.

"Suit yourself," Crystal began picking at the pieces of meat hungrily. She kept her eye on her fellow victim cautiously. His very demeanor reminded her of someone — she just couldn't remember who at the moment. The cut of his clothing — his style of dress — screamed 'establishment' and 'authority,' but he acted defeated, completely worn down.

Sydney closed his eyes, and then immediately opened them again. He'd forgotten that he'd bought the cheap bottles of whiskey to help him forget the visions of a nightmare that lurked in his mind every time he closed his eyes — the visions of emaciated corpses, chimneys stretching into the sky billowing dark, greasy smoke. All because Mr. Parker wanted to experiment with him and Jacob — explore their intelligence. Papa, Mama, and little Yvette had been sacrificed — for what? To see what research could come from exploiting a very bright and gifted set of twins? To train them to exploit other young minds in their turn?

His entire upbringing after the war, all his schooling, had been orchestrated and paid for by the Centre. Uncle Fritz — one of the few memories of the days immediately following the liberation of the camp that had been pleasant — a Centre operative PAID to show the two orphaned twins sympathy and compassion. All those diplomas in his office — bought and paid for by the Centre, and his skill had been bought and paid for and given over to Centre service ever since. His whole life had become one big, obscene joke with no punch line.

"Hey! You OK?" Crystal asked as the man moaned with some unknown agony.

How fitting that he'd ended up in a gutter, mugged by a young sewer-rat and left in the street like garbage. He didn't deserve more than that — and yet, he suddenly wanted nothing more than to go back to his home and let those who surrounded him and loved him anyway comfort him. He glanced at Crystal and yet saw only Deb — a young girl trying to claw her way out of a horrible nightmare and needing his help to find her way. Kevin — another Centre victim that had been exploited and his life shredded to advance a nefarious end — was depending on him to help him transition into a normal life.

What was he going to do now? He couldn't walk very well without his crutches — certainly he wouldn't make it all the way home. And he was a mess, bloody, reeking of cheap whiskey and other, far less savory things.

Crystal worried for a moment, and then came to a decision. She carefully wrapped up the remains of her supper and put it on a crate where she could find it again and then walked up to her fellow victim. "C'mon," she said, reaching for an arm to drape over her shoulder again and tried to pull him back to his feet. "I've got a place you can crash inside here — you look like you need to sleep this one off."

Sydney had nothing left with which to fight back. He allowed the small woman-child to manhandle him to his feet and then half-lead, half-drag him through a bent gap in the metal sheeting that covered the warehouse. Once inside, she pulled him forward about ten paces and then let him feel the thin mattress lying on the cement at his feet. "You can sleep there," she told him. "I'll sit watch tonight."

Slowly, hanging onto her hand for dear life, he went down on his good knee and then lay down on the thin pallet. It wasn't his comfortable bed from at home — indeed, this was much more like the uncomfortable pallet that had been his in Dachau than anything he'd had since. Perhaps it was that comparison that made it possible for him to close his eyes finally and surrender to the nightmare.

Kevin roused as a small cramp found his neck. As he stretched slightly and moved his head to ease the cramping, he felt Deb stir in his arms and snuggle in closer to him again. That pleasurable sensation made him open his eyes. It was dark in the den, the only light being that from the television, still on but tuned to nothing but static. They had fallen asleep to the movie, which must have been over hours ago. When he bent forward to retrieve the remote from where he tossed it to turn off the TV, Deb again stirred against him and roused. "What time is it?" she asked sleepily.

"Late enough that the TV station is gone off the air," he whispered to her. "We should probably head off to bed."

Deb tightened her arms around him. "Let's just stay here," she urged quietly. "It's late, I'm comfortable, and I don't want to move." She could feel him stiffen in hesitation. She kicked off her shoes and gave him a little nudge. "There's a pillow on that end of things," she reminded him.

"We shouldn't," he cautioned stubbornly.

"I don't want to be alone," she told him in a very simple tone. "Grandpa's not here. Stay with me."

For some reason that he'd never understand later, Kevin found himself able to follow her logic. He allowed himself to be tipped over into the pillows on the end of the daybed and then felt Deb tip over in front of him to land on his arm that was still around her, her head coming to rest on his shoulder. There was much less room for the two of them on the daybed than there had been on his bed a couple of days earlier, and as Deb stretched out her legs, her body brushed the entire length of his in its attempt to straighten without falling off the edge.

His hand landed on her waist and held her still. "Uh… You don't want to do that too often," he warned her. He was tingling from the contact from tip to toe, and the tingling was beginning to pool in his groin — in that mysterious part of his anatomy Vernon had taught him could be used to relieve tension and frustration.

"Kevin, I'll fall off," she protested and moved against him again in a way she couldn't help in order to keep from losing her balance — and it was impossible not to feel the way his body was beginning to react to her closeness. She froze for a moment and then moved slowly again and felt the bulge against her lower abdomen grow slightly.

"I'm sorry," he murmured in embarrassment and concern, and he began to move to try to get away from her. The problem was that his movements only served to make their bodies brush each other yet again. In a moment of awkwardness, he put down a hand to try to steady himself that landed instead on Deb's chest — on a very soft and giving part of her chest. "Oh God, I'm sorry," he tried again, only to end up landing directly on top of her, his knee pushing her thighs apart in his attempt to crawl over her.

"Kevin?" she asked quietly, reaching up to where she knew his face was.

"Deb, this isn't such a good idea…" he repeated the mantra as her fingers caught at the back of his neck and pulled him to her. But then their lips touched, and he abandoned himself to the sensation of touching along the entire length of their bodies — of lying together entwined intimately in such a way that they fit together all too well. The kiss deepened almost immediately, with Deb breathing out a sigh of contentment as the hand that had been on her breast found her throat for a moment. The feel of his trim, hard body lying against hers with his desire for her pressing into her slightly was making every nerve in her body wake up and begin to sing, and once more she started to feel as if she were flying.

Then, even as the kiss was ending, she ran a hand down his arm to his hand and pulled the hand back to her chest, to her breast, and held it there.

"What are you doing?" Kevin whispered hoarsely. He could feel the softness of her beneath his palm, and his thumb was tempted to play with the soft surface that was just beneath it.

"I need to know," she whispered back at him, just as hoarsely. "Please."

Kevin moved his thumb and discovered the hard little peak. Deb breathed in as the sensation of his light touch set her afire and then fanned the flames by continuing to brush against her softly, tentatively. Her hand went to his chest and pulled his tee shirt from his waistband, anxious to feel his warm skin beneath her fingertips. "Deb!"

But she was determined, and soon his tee shirt was on the floor and her hands were exploring his chest boldly. Her fingertips tangled themselves in the sparse hair even as his stroking of her became braver, more explorative. Suddenly his hand was pulling her blouse from the waistband and then undoing the buttons so that he could get to her skin too. The feel of his warm hand on her skin was wonderful, and then Deb smiled as he seemed to be confounded by the lacy barrier of her bra. She slipped one arm out of her blouse sleeve and then reached behind herself to help.

Kevin felt the garment suddenly loosen and fall away, and then his hand was on Deb's soft skin. His fingertips played with the tight hard bud he had found earlier as his lips claimed hers again in a deep and fiery kiss made even more consuming by the sensation of skin against skin now. When at last his lips left hers, they blazed a hot and liquid track down her throat and directly to the soft mound, where he dropped a kiss onto the hard little nubbin he'd been occupied with previously.

Deb held her breath as he kissed her breast first very lightly, and then with a little more intent. This was not the same as that man's mouth or teeth on her — this was Kevin, and he loved her, and his kisses were making her body wake up in ways it had never awakened before — especially his kisses there. She arched into him and felt him take her into his mouth with a soft suck, and the sensation was magic. His hand swept up boldly to hold her breast still as he nuzzled and suckled, and then it swept down her torso and up to her other breast. His fingers toyed very carefully with the bandage they found there, even though they could feel the firm peak pressing desperately upward beneath it. Eventually he lifted his head and panted at her, "Does that tell you what you wanted to know?"

"Oh, yes!" she sighed, her fingers tangling in his hair and circling his ear distractedly as he resumed his heated kisses and caresses. "Don't stop!" She shifted beneath him and felt that hard bulge at his hips press even more insistently against her leg. Deciding that this was what she really wanted, she swept her hand down the length of his torso until she brushed directly over him, making his hips surge toward hers involuntarily.

Kevin lifted his head from her breast immediately. "Deb," he warned in a shaky voice. "Be careful. That's not…"

Her fingers were busy with the top of her jeans — and once that was undone, she once more commandeered his hand and carefully pushed it down toward the open button and zipper. "Touch me," she begged. "God, Kevin, please touch me here too!" If his kisses at her breast were any indication, his caresses THERE would wipe away all of the dark and unhappy memories once and for all. "Make me forget everything. Please!"

Excited and stimulated enough that he was unable to say no to her now, he moved his hand gently beneath the elastic and over the soft curls. What he found there had her soon arching into him again and sighing softly as he probed and stroked and felt her thighs slowly part and give him more room. He found a rhythm to his caresses there, a rhythm that her hips soon found and returned, a rhythm that he found incredibly exciting and irresistible. His lips found her breast again, and his tongue wove arabesques between hot kisses.

Then, surprisingly, she reached for him, her fingers making quick work of the button on the top of his jeans and then encircling him brazenly once he was free of the restrictive clothing, making him suck in his breath suddenly. It was one thing to handle himself to relieve tension the way Vernon had reluctantly taught him — it was quite something else altogether to have another's soft hand stroking him in rhythm to the way he was caressing her. His hips surged into her hand before he could control himself and his caresses of her body became firmer, more insistent, making her moan and rock against him more surely.

It was becoming all too intoxicating — how he had ever thought the process boring or gross was now beyond him. He stretched up and kissed her deeply and passionately and then moaned against the kiss as he felt the way their bodies were beginning to move together from the intimate caresses being given and received. He pulled back from her with difficulty.

"Deb, if we're going to want to be able to stop," he decided he'd try once more, while he still could. Sydney had warned him, and he knew with sudden surety that with her caresses now she was rapidly taking him right up to the point past which he doubted he'd be able to stop himself. His mentor had been right — that point could only be known through the experience of approaching it with a partner. Right now he wanted what was happening between them more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life — and he wanted… more. "Oh, Deb…" he breathed softly as she stretched up and kissed him at the base of the throat, and then nibbled on his chest without ceasing her ministrations at his groin. "Please," he groaned in pleasure. "We need to stop…"

Kevin's touch had been like balm, healing what had been damaged and soiled, and now her body had her completely in its demanding spell. She felt a tightening in her lower belly from the way he was stroking her — and a sense of emptiness and hunger there that she didn't completely understand but knew instinctively how to cure. "God, don't stop," she whispered softly as her body began to tremble and pulse strongly from the wonderful sensations his continuing and insistent caresses were causing. "Oh…MY!" Her hips bucked up toward the hand that was making it hard for her to think of anything but how much she wanted him to continue what he was doing, how much she wanted… more… from him… NOW. "Make love to me, Kevin."

"I don't want to hurt you," he whispered back, his lips at her ear, kissing her neck there. There was nothing he wanted to do more right now than to try out this thing called sex with her, but… He carefully removed his hands from inside her clothing and caught at her hand and reluctantly removed it from him. "We shouldn't…"

"You won't hurt me — please don't stop. I want… I need… you to make love to me." Her hand escaped his and closed around him again — and with her sure touch, the point of no return slipped away before he could even note its passing. "Don't you want to?"

"Oh, yes," he breathed and kissed her deeply and passionately again, surrendering to the moment and to his sudden, desperate need to make her completely his without delay.

Fisher was long since winded and panting with exertion — it was a long and winding road to the top of the mountain. He had no idea how long it had been since he'd left his partner in the ruined car that had plowed head-first into an embankment. All he knew was that the roadbed in front of him was beginning to level out for a change.

He hauled his cell phone out of his pocket again and checked the display. He had a signal — not as strong as it could be, but definitely there! He hit a preprogrammed number and put the device to his ear.

"This is Harrison. Talk to me."

"This is Fisher. We need help," he stated immediately. "Davis is injured, and there's a vehicle off the road on White Cloud Road, about three miles south of Sydney's cabin."

"What the hell, Fisher? I told you bozos…"

Fisher was shaking his head. "Blame the other guy, boss. That SUV was all over the road — Davis put us into an embankment to avoid a head-on collision."

He could hear Harrison barking out instructions to somebody else in the room with him. Then: "I'm having the Virginia authorities notified and dispatching another sweeper team to join up with you. Keep in touch…"

"That's just it, sir," Fisher explained tiredly. "We're down in a hole with no cell signal. I had to walk about a mile and a half just to get up high enough to catch the signal again. I need to get back to Frank — he was bleeding pretty good…"

"OK, OK," Harrison conceded. "You get back down to Davis and stick close until help arrives. Hopefully I'll see you two sometime tomorrow."

"Will do," Fisher said, then waited and let his boss disconnect the call before pocketing the cell phone and picking up the flashlight from where he'd laid it at his feet. It was going to be a long walk back down to the car, and the sooner he got started…

Dr. Franz Ziegler walked into the construction zone and directly to the elevator structure that would take him down to his labs on SL-18. He hadn't been back to his labs since the bombing and subsequent evacuation, so he wasn't prepared for what he found when he keyed in the lock code, pushed through the doors and turned on the lights.

File cabinets — the repositories for all of his precious data on psychological techniques designed specifically to fit seamlessly with the physical reactions to the drug sequence — stood with their drawers half pulled out, obviously empty. He walked slowly through the lab toward his office, disappointed to see that the door had been left unlocked and standing open. Within, his personal file cabinets had also been cleaned out — and even his desk drawers had been left half-open and obviously empty.

He cast a cautious eye up at the camera in the corner of the room, taking a deep sigh when he saw the little red light that told of it's being active wasn't lit. He swore softly in German and flopped himself down into his comfortable leather chair. Captain Lewis had assured him that he would have his data to work from — but obviously that the bulk of the data would NOT be coming from the Centre itself. He would have to place a call to the good captain and make arrangements for its return.

Ziegler knew that his cell phone was useless this far underground — he'd have to wait until he was outside the Centre itself before he could place a call. He looked around his office, staring at the certificates and diplomas he'd hung on the wall to remind himself that he'd become an honest researcher. They looked abandoned down here with nobody walking in and out of the lab or the office to show that the knowledge they represented was being used.

Then he smiled and glanced up to check the camera in the corner of the office to make sure that it was still off. Mr. Raines had anticipated that a time might come when certain data could have been compromised. He had called in a locksmith who had taken over the office for over a week making provisions for a small safe. Ziegler moved the printer stand against the wall aside and pushed carefully at a specific point in the paneling near the baseboard. There was a tiny click, and then the spring-loaded paneling and baseboard swung out, revealing the electronic keypad and handle. He punched in his code and pulled up hard on the handle, and the small metal door opened.

Ziegler began to smile more broadly. It was all there — the essential elements of Black Hole had remained undiscovered. The small tray of stoppered vials and the six notebooks full of dosage notations and psychological treatment progressions sat right where he had left them that crazy evening when the Centre Tower had been brought low. Without touching them, he closed the little safe once more and pressed the paneling back into place before moving the printer stand back once more in front of the spot.

SL-18 was now abandoned, he knew. Most of the projects that had been underway there had been military contracts, some of them inter-related or contracted by the same branch and office at the Pentagon. The trick would be to get into SL-18 and into his labs without calling attention to his frequenting an abandoned part of the subterranean structure. It was obvious that the security system had been disconnected from the main, since none of the cameras seemed active at all. This was good for him, he thought and smiled.

He'd still have to contact Lewis and see how much of the more detailed data could be returned — but he could also report that he was virtually ready to restart some of the experiments within hours. He strode in satisfaction through the lab and carefully locked the door behind him before heading back to the elevator.

"Hey, get a load of this!"

The duty security officer in the monitoring room on SL-5 stood up from his desk and moved over behind the man watching the surveillance systems on SL-18. The cameras showed a man walking toward the elevator from one of the empty labs.

"Did he get in?" the officer demanded.

"Punched in the lock code without a single mistake," the man announced and brought up the scene a few minutes earlier on another monitor.

"Whose code did he use?"

The man looked down into his book. "Dr. Franz Ziegler's, sir."

"Were the lab cameras operational?"

"Yes, sir," the man smiled. "Although HE wouldn't know they were. We used some electrician's tape, as Mr. Atlee, suggested, over the indicator lights so that anybody going into the labs without authorization wouldn't know that they were active."

"Show me."

The man punched up the digital archive of the past few minutes in the lab. When the officer saw Ziegler bend and open a small panel in the side of the office wall, he knew he had something that the Big Boys up above would want to see. He reached down and picked up the telephone. "This is Monitoring Room 3. We have some interesting footage that you folks up there might be interested in."

"Oh?" Harrison said, yawning. It had been a long night, what with Dr. Green's disappearance and now the apparent traffic accident of two sweepers in Virginia. "What have you got?"

"We caught us an intruder in one of the closed up labs down on SL-18, AND," the officer paused for effect, "getting into something that looks like a private safe in the office there."

That made Harrison sit up and take notice. "Put the data on a DSA and get it up to my office right away." He thought for a moment. "Just out of curiosity, any idea of the identity of our intruder?"

"I think it's a fellow by the name of Dr. Ziegler. At least, it was Dr. Ziegler's security code that was used to unlock the lab."

"Ziegler?" Harrison leaned forward to his desk and picked up the notice left him by Sam that Ziegler had an entire surveillance team assigned to him. "Any sign of a tail on this guy?"

"Nope." The officer shook his head. "Then again, considering that SL-18 is abandoned, it would be hard to tail him without being spotted down there…"

"You have a point," Harrison had to admit. "Thanks — and get that DSA up here ASAP."

"Will do." The duty officer patted the man sitting in front of the four monitor screens on the shoulder. "Good work, Jack. Give me a DSA of all of that as soon as possible, OK?"

"Yes, sir…"

Deb lay quietly in Kevin's arms, still a little out of breath and with a heart that was beating hard and fast in her chest. Kevin's arms around her were no longer tentative or uncertain — he held her fast and close against him in a tight and possessive embrace. He too was still breathing hard from their recent activity and continued to nuzzle her hair and drop gentle kisses on her forehead from time to time.

"OK?" he asked her finally — the first word he'd spoken to her since abandoning himself to the passion of the moment.

"OK," she responded softly, kissing the chest beneath her. She moved her hand so that she was holding him at the waist and snuggled in closer. "OK."

"I didn't hurt you?" He knew he'd been lost for a while in his own incredible experience of sensations that he could have never dreamed possible. Only now that his mind was clearing did he begin to wonder — and worry.

"No. You didn't hurt me," she answered and kissed his chest again as reassurance. He hadn't hurt her at all. The pain she had expected had never happened — only a sensation of being filled by him in a way that, for the briefest moment, had reminded her of rough fingers pressing into her body. But the memory had lasted only for the briefest of moments because then he had started to move inside her and caress her and kiss her deeply again. Immediately her body had reminded her of why she'd been so hungry for his touch, his embrace, and begun to move with him. And then it had become magic — beyond magic.

"Are you sorry?" he asked, his hand smoothing up her arm and then back down again to hold her close to him. She was so precious to him now – the thought that she regretted what they'd done…

She thought for only a moment. "No." It was the truth. For all the boyfriends she'd had during her high school years that had groped her and tried desperately to get her to let them make love to her she was thankful that she had waited for Kevin. The others had been out for a quick conquest — Kevin had been out for anything but. Making love with him had been a journey of trial and error and discovery for both of them together, with a mind-blowing finale that still curled her toes to think about. "Are you?"

"Oh, no!" He pressed his lips firmly to her forehead and tightened the circle of his arms around her. "I just…"

"I love you," she told him, stretching up and capturing his lips with hers. It was a gentle and sweet kiss with a restrained sort of passion that took Kevin completely by surprise. "I don't regret anything," she said when the kiss finally ended.

"I love you too," he sighed as she settled back down against his chest, with her head on his shoulder. She was the most important thing in his world. His mind was filled with thoughts of her — of her perfume, of her voice, of the way she had called out his name near the end, of how it had felt to be surrounded by her completely until it had nearly driven him mad with desire. "I just worry that…"

"You know, I think that's one of the things I love about you," Deb told him, pulling her hand from his waist and smoothing it up and across the expanse of his chest and then down his torso. "You think more about me and what I'm feeling. So tell me…" she kissed his chest yet again. "Was it what you expected?"

"I didn't know what to expect," he admitted honestly. "I've never been with anyone before." He kissed her hair. "What about you? Was it what you expected?"

Deb smiled against him. "No," she replied equally honestly. "It was more… better than that."

Kevin smiled and felt as if he'd just been handed the moon on a platter.

She shivered then. "But you know what? It's getting chilly down here with no covers — no clothes on…"

"Really!" Kevin agreed as he felt the errant breath of air conditioner that had chilled Deb. He hugged her tighter in an attempt to warm her and then found himself unable to resist kissing her as his hands slowed and found interesting terrain to explore. She was just as quick to let her hands roam his body, down his side to his buttock and then toward the front… He broke the kiss and caught at her hand before she touched him and he lost the ability to reason again. "We should probably take this upstairs, where there's a bigger bed with nice, warm covers," he said in an unsteady voice. It was amazing. He wanted her again — already. He doubted he would ever be able to get enough of her.

"OK." He felt her relax into his arms without trying to claim her hand back. "But what about Mr. Ikeda?" she asked warily.

He smiled. "You put on your jeans and blouse, I'll throw on my jeans and tee, and I doubt he'll say anything. Besides," he kissed her again, "he probably has already figured out what was going on back here. I don't know how quiet we were while we were… together. So, if he WAS going to say something, he would have already, don't you think?"

He had a point. "I suppose," she said skeptically. The idea that Mr. Ikeda not only knew what had just gone on between the two of them but also was giving them his tacit approval through his silence and non-interference was somewhat disconcerting. Grandpa, she knew very well, would not have been pleased at all and would have been quite vocal about it.

She sat up and reached to the floor for her clothing that had been so carelessly tossed over the side of the daybed couch. "Here," she said, tossing him his tee shirt and jeans and beginning to climb into her own. They dressed quickly and, gathering up those undergarments they'd not bothered with otherwise, they joined hands and started toward the front of the house and the stairs.

Ikeda was in his regular spot near the arch of the living room, sitting quietly on his heels and with his eyes closed – but not asleep. Neither of the young people made the mistake of thinking him asleep. They merely walked quietly past him and then up the stairs. Ikeda waited until the two had mounted the stairs before opening his eyes and smiling quietly to himself. It was good, he decided, that Green-san's pretty blossom of a granddaughter had found comfort in the arms of his young student to move beyond the horror of whatever she had faced in the previous weeks. Kevin-san would be a good protector for her.

The sounds of their lovemaking had not remained in the den, and he had come to the back of the house only once to make sure all was secure around the young lovers before leaving them to their pleasures. His eyes had rested briefly on the pair as their pale skins revealed their rhythmic movements in the dark, and he briefly remembered the last time he'd been in the arms of his lovely Keiko. No doubt by now, the Yakuza had probably moved her to a place where he would never find her again — or that would betray him to them should he try to search for her there.

He closed his eyes again to focus on the sounds outside the house in order to keep the young lovers safe for whatever they intended to do in the room above.

Deb moved to her bedroom door without letting go of his hand as Kevin pushed open the door to his own room and gave a tug to pull her in after him. That answers the question of his place or mine, she thought to herself with a smile and then turned back and entered his room after him. She came up behind him after she closed the door and wrapped her hands around him from the back and pressed herself tightly against his back. He relaxed against her for a moment and then turned so that it was the fronts of their bodies pressed against each other.

Already he was starting to find her closeness intoxicating – and he knew she could tell that he wanted her again, just as he could tell from the tight little buttons pressed into his chest through thin blouse and tee shirt that she wanted him again too. He bent down and caught her in a deep and hot kiss as he began to unbutton her blouse to reveal her soft skin again. Her fingers were working the buttons of his jeans again, pushing them over his hips so that they dropped to the floor at about the same time as her blouse fell open to his seeking touch. It didn't take long before her jeans and blouse were pooled on the floor as well, and he was tugging his tee shirt over his head.

He led her to his bed by the hand, already breathless with excitement at the thought of making love with her once more. He then picked her up in his arms and placed her in the middle of the huge mattress. He climbed in next to her and pulled the sheet and comforter over the top of them both.

"Frank? Can you hear me?" Fisher called out as he finally neared the Centre sedan with its hood crumpled into the steep embankment. There was no sound from within the car, and the panting sweeper hurried as best he could without loosing his footing the last few yards and pulled open the passenger door.

The interior light was still on, and Davis had his head back against the headrest. But the bloodied handkerchief that had been pressed against the cut on his face had fallen into his lap, and the injured man was incredibly pale and unconscious. The blood had continued to pour down his face and drip onto his white dress shirt.

"Shit!" Fisher reached for his partner's hand, making sure that the man still had a pulse. Davis moaned at the touch, but didn't rouse further. Fisher dug in his partner's pocket for another handkerchief and then applied that to the cut, which was still oozing blood. He groped on the opposite side of Davis' seat for the button that would recline the seat slightly, then lowered the injured man until he wasn't nearly vertical so that it would be easier for him to keep pressure on the wound. He tipped his hand to check his wristwatch. Two-thirty in the morning.

He heaved a sigh. Help couldn't come soon enough, as far as he was concerned…

The man on the thin mattress moaned again softly in his sleep, and Crystal frowned carefully as she wadded up the greasy wrapper that had held her meal and tossed it into a corner behind some boxes. Something was wrong with the guy, and she didn't know what to do or to whom to go for help.

She couldn't go to the men who would come to the warehouse — she'd seen them chase away another derelict not long after she and Scooter had taken up residence, and they hadn't been much kinder to him than Scooter had been to this drunk. She thought briefly of Kevin, then dismissed the idea. He distrusted her completely, and would never be open to coming with her to see what needed to be done. Especially when he caught sight of Scooter's latest job with her face — her left eyes was now swollen shut completely, and she was sure there was a bruise the size of Manhattan on the cheek below it.

She shouldn't have teased him so much, she chided herself much too late to do any good. She knew she'd been very deliberately hurtful with some of her comments, and then been confused by either his lack of understanding some of the common references or satisfied when he'd finally riled.

"Jacob! Nein! Herr… Herr Doktor! Ich hab' es nicht gemeint…" the lame man shouted suddenly in the midst of his nightmare, startling the girl badly. "Bitte…" his voice trailed away in a defeated plea. "Jarod… I'm so sorry… Parker…"

Whatever she did tomorrow, first on her list of things to do was to find SOMEone she could tell about him — and get him the help he needed. She had three names: Jacob, Jarod and Parker. Maybe someone in town would know one of them. She pulled the leather jacket closer around herself and began to curl up to sleep too.

"Kevin… Forgive me…"

Crystal sat up again straighter. Kevin? This man knew Kevin?

Maybe she DID know where to go after all.

Deb shifted, smiling in her sleep as she once more dreamed of being in Kevin's arms and enjoying his lovemaking. Her dream self smiled up at him as he moved over her, her body singing as he bent down to kiss her breast gently and press himself into her once more. The feelings he was creating were beyond fabulous, and she closed her dream eyes and sighed in contentment. She loved him so much, and she knew that he loved her.

She didn't feel the change in the dream immediately — she was too wrapped up in the delight she was receiving from his lips on her body, his body moving inside hers. But the smooth and gentle movements against her, in her, slowly became jerky and rough, and suddenly it wasn't lips at her breast but crooked, yellowed teeth. Her dream self suddenly opened her eyes to find the face of HIM looming over her, his face a cruel leer as he thrust himself painfully into her over and over again… and then bent down and took her nipple between his teeth and bit hard…

With a shriek, Deb surged straight up in bed and then blinked, not recognizing the room around her. Kevin, roused by her scream, slowly sat up behind her and reached for her. "Deb?" he asked softly and sleepily. "What's wrong?" He felt her shudder when his hand touched the bare skin of her back, and he quickly awoke completely.

Deb felt the hand at her back and was terrified. Had HE found her in her room and taken her away at last? Where was she — and why did she have no clothes on? Was it true — had HE raped her after all now? She pulled her arms tightly around herself and folded herself into a ball as if that posture would protect her.

Kevin moved behind her and put a hand on both shoulders and then smoothed them down the upper arms and back. He knew she had nightmares, but he'd never witnessed them in this way before. "Deb," he soothed, moving his body up against her back and pressing against her gently. "You're safe, I'm right here." Then he felt the shudder of her silent sobs and he wrapped her in his arms. "You're safe. You're safe. Oh, Deb, come back to me! He can't get to you here. You're safe with me."

Deb began to struggle against the arms that held her, but Kevin held on tightly and kept whispering his reassurances into her ear, hoping that sooner or later she'd hear him. He could feel it the moment she did, for she suddenly went limp in his arms and then turned into him with a choked sob. She tucked her face into his neck and wept bitter tears, holding him close and finally becoming aware of the feeling of security that came with his arms around her, keeping her safe.

He gently pulled on her until they were lying back into the pillows again, with Deb's head on his shoulder and his arms around her tightly and protectively. "Hush, Deb. He can't get to you here. I have you. You're safe."

Deb choked back a sob as she threw an arm around Kevin's waist and clung to him tightly. This was Kevin, and he loved her — but he was so very, very wrong. She was as vulnerable in her dreams as she had been all along. Nothing had changed.

She would never be safe. Never.

Feedback, please:


	16. Turning Point

Resolutions – 16

Turning Point

by MMB

It was seven-thirty in the morning, and Chip Harrison was exhausted. He'd been up all night coordinating the search for Dr. Green and still needed to call in the Blue Cove PD for assistance now that his search teams had come up empty. He'd also taken several reports on the accident on a Virginia highway that had landed one sweeper in the hospital with complications from a serious concussion and another man in the morgue. Finally, the last hour or so had been spent reviewing the DSA from an abandoned lab on SL-18 and sending off a team of sweepers to open that private safe one way or the other and confiscate whatever was hidden inside it. The MOMENT Sam Atlee walked through that doorway, he promised himself, he was on his way home to a nice, quiet, soft, comfortable bed.

The doorway to the Security Control office burst open and Miss Parker swept in, looking as fresh as a new penny and with intent on her somber face. "Talk to me," she stated with no greeting whatsoever. "What news of Sydney?"

Chip sorted through the paperwork on the desk. "Well, near as we can figure, he bought himself two bottles of whiskey at the liquor store nearest his house at about four-thirty in the afternoon. The clerk there said that he was polite, rather curt, and drove off in a hurry once his business there was concluded. And that," he tossed the report back on the desk, "was the last anybody's seen of him."

"Did you ask the Blue Cove PD to put out an APB on Sydney's car?"

He shook his head. "Not yet. I was hoping that the four teams I've had combing the immediate area all night would find it and him first, BEFORE we had to involve any police. I was going to call just before you came in." He watched his boss' face fall slightly — obviously she had been hoping for some good news. "I'm sorry, Miss Parker. It's been busy night here — I wish I had better news for you."

Miss Parker pinched the skin above her nose and stood for a moment with her eyes closed. "What else? You said it was a busy night…"

"We had an intruder in one of the abandoned labs on SL-18," he told her, handing her two still photographs that had been taken from the DSA. "Seems Dr. Ziegler wanted to check up on things he'd left down there."

She looked closely at the one photograph. "Is that a safe he's opening?"

"Yup," he nodded. "I sent a team down as soon as I saw the video to break into it and remove whatever he's got locked up in it."

Her grey eyes pinned him. "Is the surveillance for Dr. Ziegler in place and functional? I don't see…"

"I conferred with the team leader. They decided, when they saw where he was headed, to hang back while he was in the Centre itself, knowing that the cameras were already in place and functional again. They didn't want to give away their presence…"

"OK, OK," she waved her hand and dismissed the question. "We'll need to make sure we have all his lines of communication wired — we have a tap on the cell number assigned to him?"

Harrison nodded. "We taped a conversation between Ziegler and a Captain Lewis where Ziegler told Lewis he could start the moment he got 'the rest of it' back — I'm assuming he's speaking of the rest of the Black Hole research data. Lewis told Ziegler that there was going to be a slight delay to make sure 'other mistakes' didn't put us on a higher alert."

"The INS raid," she breathed.

"He said 'mistakes' — plural. God knows what else has been set in motion." Harrison's dark eyes were glued to her face. "I'll have a transcript for you and Mr. Atlee before I leave."

"That's it, I hope…"

"Nope," he reported unhappily. "The sweeper team coming back from White Cloud were involved in an accident on the mountain road in Virginia — one is hospitalized, the other just a bit bruised around the edges. The driver of the other vehicle went off the road and was killed."

"You HAVE had a busy night," Miss Parker said in surprise, then sighed. "OK. I want to know what the sweepers find in that safe down in Ziegler's office and I want regular updates on the search for Sydney."

"Yes, ma'am. Anything else you want me to pass along to Sam when he gets here?"

"No," she answered, feeling tired already and not even having made it to her own office yet that morning. "Just to keep me personally informed on all fronts." She looked down at her Assistant Security Chief with an understanding look on her face. "And get some rest. You look like you've been dragged through a knothole."

For some odd reason, her noticing that he was tired felt like a compliment. "Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am."

"He's not in his office, and he's not at home." Sylvie Gotham's head poked around the corner of Chuck Whelan's office. "You want us to place an APB on his car?"

Chuck didn't need to think for long. "Yeah. Call both the DC and Maryland authorities — I want this guy found." He stood up. "Then come meet me in his office. Let's see what this nondescript little accountant of ours has been up to." He frowned when his secretary's head replaced that of his agent. "What is it, Ann?"

"There are some FBI agents here to see you in regards to a Mr. Phillip Baldwin who works here," she announced, obviously wondering whether she needed to try to figure out a way to send agents of another governmental bureau packing.

Chuck sat down heavily. "Send them in," he sighed. "Sylvie?" he called out.

Her head reappeared. "Yeah?"

"Tear Phil's office apart. Go through his files. I want to know everything this man has been working on for the last six weeks, and I want to know it before lunchtime."

"I don't think so," Tom Gillespie said from behind Sylvie, "unless you'd like to do so against a federal search warrant."

Chuck looked from Sylvie's expectant face to the dour one of the FBI agent who had spoken and then waved all of them into his office. "Hang on, Sylvie, until we hear what the man has to say." He turned skeptical eyes on the newcomer. "Now, what's this all about?"

"We are investigating allegations of congressional misconduct and misuse of authority, and we have a federal search warrant to cover the contents of the office of a Phillip Baldwin," Gillespie announced curtly. "Now if you'll show us…"

"Wait a minute…" Chuck held up his hand. "What does Phil have to do with congressional misconduct?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Whelan, but I'm not at liberty to discuss the particulars of the case with you," the FBI agent answered apologetically. "May we see Mr. Baldwin's office now?"

Chuck looked directly at Sylvie. "I want you to be present during the search and make sure that any records these agents remove are copied. You see," he turned back to Gillespie, "you're stepping on an internal investigation here of Mr. Baldwin. He's suspected of attempting to instigate a frivolous investigation of foreign espionage ties to two ladies who have no obvious ties to anyone under suspicion. We've been hearing the buzz about INS being sent on a similarly frivolous raid…"

"Involving the Centre?" Gillespie asked point-blank.

"As a matter of fact…" Chuck gaped. "I wonder…"

"When it comes to things dealing with the Centre, having cause to wonder is cause for suspicion," Gillespie's brows furled. "We may be working two sides of the same case here."

"Give me the name and number of your direct superior, Agent," Chuck put out his hand demandingly. "If your interests and mine coincide, then it would be better if we worked together."

"That would be nice," Gillespie commented dryly and pulled a business card from his wallet and wrote down a name and phone number on the back. "Keep me in the loop, will you?"

"Don't worry, Agent. You'll know what I know when I get done," Chuck promised and then waved the group from his office. He put the card down on his desk and carefully dialed the number written there. "I need to speak to Assistant Director Berghoff. This is Chuck Whelan over at NSA. Yes, I'll hold…"

"Doug, this is George Canfield…"

"Damn it! You're not supposed to be calling me here…"

"Have you heard anything from Phil?"

Curtis scowled. "No, of course not. What would I have heard from Phil about — we just had a meeting…"

"My contact at the NSA office told me about a pair of FBI agents with a warrant to search his office — something about allegations of congressional misconduct…" Canfield ran his finger around his collar, wishing he hadn't tied his tie quite so tightly that morning. "Have you heard anything?"

"Not a peep from that quarter. Heard from Lewis this morning, however — seems our friend in the Centre is willing to start Black Hole back up again at virtually a moment's notice. I'm going to be making arrangements for that part of the data to be delivered at the man's house later this afternoon." Curtis handed the orders for Lewis to make the arrangements to his secretary with a mouthed, "Fax that over, Donna, will you?"

"What if they're onto him for what he did with the INS and at his own agency?" Canfield worried into his confederate's ear. "He has enough in his files…"

"Look," Curtis barked. "Phil is no dummy. He probably doesn't keep anything incriminating in the office — and God only knows where he keeps the rest of our records. If we don't know where to look for them, no idiot at the FBI will either."

"But I can't raise Phil at home OR at the office. You don't think he would have bugged out on us, would he?" Canfield pressed.

The question caught Curtis by surprise. "You know, I don't know whether he would or not," he admitted. "He's a secretive little bastard — I never was very happy when Harry brought him into the group. Neither Tom nor I have ever trusted him entirely."

"What do we do if he HAS bugged out? HE'S the one with all the money and financial connections, you know… How do we expect to pay the man to put Black Hole back into production if our money supplier has up and vanished?"

"Look, don't get your panties in a wad. Call Harry and find out if HE knows anything. Don't push any panic buttons until we know for sure the theater's on fire. Got it?"

"Damn it, Doug…"

"I mean it, George. Call Harry — and then leave a message at the regular place. DON'T call me at work again!"

Curtis slammed the telephone back into its cradle. They were SO close — they couldn't afford anybody starting to unravel now…

Crystal jerked awake with the sound of vehicle doors slamming and almost fell off of the crate she'd curled up on. She blinked a couple of times and then looked around her in alarm. She'd slept too late — morning light was streaming in the high windows of the warehouse. The workers would be coming into the warehouse any minute — and she was still there!

She jumped down from her crate and steadied herself against it when a wave of dizziness swept over her. She'd forgotten in her panic that she'd been hurt – and now her head felt like it wanted to explode again. The pain in her head and the fact that she couldn't see out of her left eye reminded her of everything that had happened the night before, and she scurried to the side of the man on the thin mattress. He too had curled onto his side in an attempt to keep warm in the chill of the Delaware darkness.

"Hey!" she whispered urgently, putting her hand on his side and shaking him — and then drawing back in disgust at the wetness that she'd put her hands in. She stared for a moment at the blood and then rolled the man over on his back. His eyes fluttered and finally opened, and she slapped her hand over his mouth just before he let loose with a groan. "We've got to get out of here – NOW!" she whispered at him and pulled at his hand. "If you think Scooter did a number on you last night, you don't want THESE guys to lay a hand on you this morning — believe me!" She pulled and yanked and finally motivated the sleepy, uncoordinated and only partly cooperative man to once more get up on his good knee and then lurch to his feet clumsily.

With an eye for any stray dock workers, Crystal led Sydney back out through the side of the warehouse and across the asphalt to the curbing, where he stopped short and almost pulled her off her feet. Removing his hand from hers and bending over at the waist with his hands on his thighs, he shook his head. "I can't go any further."

"You have to," she insisted in a hiss. "You do NOT want those guys to beat you up. You already look like shit warmed over on a stick — so trust me, they won't hesitate at all."

"My knee…" he gasped in real pain.

"Damn it!" Crystal breathed out in angry frustration and slipped her shoulder under his arm on his bad side. "Here," she grumbled. "Lean on me and let's haul ass."

Sydney sighed. The girl wasn't taking no for an answer for anything. He leaned hard on her shoulder and felt her stumble a little. "I'll only slow you down," he said, balking again. "Leave me — get yourself away."

"Would you shut up and quit stalling?" she bit off at him. "Give me some credit — I wouldn't leave a mongrel dog to those jerks. Now MOVE IT!"

Slowly, clumsily, with many stops and stumbles and several more barbed verbal prods, Crystal managed to get Sydney to put one foot in front of the other down the dock and around the corner onto a quiet street. She kept him moving until she'd found an alleyway that looked like a reasonably safe place to rest, then found an empty doorway in which to let him drop to a sitting position. Incredibly weary chestnut eyes peered blearily up into her bruised and swollen face. "You're a very stubborn child," he commented with a slight slur behind the panting that came from exertion he was no longer used to, "And you're hurt. You need to see a doctor."

"You're the one that's bleeding, mister, not me," Crystal pointed out with an index finger not quite touching the blood-soaked shirt, not quite knowing how to feel about someone noticing her pains and injuries before acknowledging their own. "I want you to stay put. I'm going to go get help."

"You don't have to…"

"Look," she grumbled, crouching down in front of him, "I don't know you from Adam, but you don't strike me as the kind of person who normally runs around the bad side of town drunk as a skunk in the middle of the night, getting themselves mugged. And I don't see how what Scooter did should have made you bleed like that. You need help…"

Those weary eyes caught at hers again. "And just to whom are you going to go, eh?" He shook a shaking finger at her. "I doubt that you'll be wanting to just walk into the police station looking like that…" He nodded very carefully when he saw her look down. "You see? Don't worry about me. Leave me here and get yourself away to someplace safe – someplace where this Scooter of yours can't find you again. You can do better than him, you know…"

"Who's Kevin?" Crystal demanded suddenly. If he knew the Kevin that lived on the other side of the park, then she didn't need to even think about going to the police and avoiding one set of questions to get him some help.

Sydney blinked in astonishment. "What did you say?"

"I asked you who Kevin was? You were talking in your sleep last night, and you mentioned his name – along with a few others. So…" She looked at him with raised brows, obviously waiting for a reply.

He let his gaze drop from hers to watch a piece of litter dance against the curbing near the street. "Just a young man I know." It was a half-truth, at least.

Crystal scowled. "You know, even with only one eye working right I can see that you're a piss-poor liar, mister." She got to her feet. "I'm going to be gone for a while, but I'll be back."

"I appreciate the thought – I really do – but you don't have to do anything, my dear," Sydney said gently. "You do what you need to do to take care of yourself. Don't worry about me."

"And you called ME stubborn," Crystal shook her head. This man had an interesting accent that she couldn't quite place, and an easy manner about him that she was finding genuinely refreshing. He was a lot like Kevin…

THAT was who he reminded her of! She turned on her heel and began walking toward the street and the park on the other side of town. Kevin had a manner very similar to this man's.

She knew she looked like Hell, and that she'd probably burned a lot of her bridges with the young man, from the things he'd tossed at her yesterday. But if this was someone that he knew – maybe someone that he cared for… Well, he'd asked her to prove that she was worth bothering with…

Deb found moving that morning an interesting reminder of what she'd been up to in the night as she discovered that muscles she didn't even know she had were aching slightly. Her steps were a little slower, and she knew that it had caught Kevin's attention as she walked across his bedroom with as much dignity as she could manage in the nude after collecting her discarded clothes from his floor. "Are you OK?" he asked, from the edge of the bed where he was slipping into boxers and jeans again.

"I'm fine," she told him over her shoulder and slipped down the hall to her bedroom for a fresh set of clothes for the day.

Not waiting to put on tee shirt or shoes, he padded after her and stood in the doorway, watching her slip into a bathrobe. "Are you sure I didn't hurt you?"

"Kevin – I'm fine. Really!" she answered back, collecting clothing and then moving toward him and the door. "I need to take a shower because I have to work at the library this afternoon, you know," she told him with a finger in the center of his chest, pushing him backwards.

He was confused. "Is this how it works, then?" he asked quietly. "We get up in the morning after… THAT… and act as if nothing happened?"

Deb stopped and turned around and walked back to him. "We both know something happened," she told him gently, a hand on his chest. "I'm not acting as if nothing happened – it was too important to me." She stretched up and planted another kiss on his lips that was filled with restrained passion. "I just want a little while by myself to think, you know? Decide what happens next. You have to admit, last night was a little… unexpected…"

"What do you mean, 'decide what happens next?' What DOES happen next? Don't we…" He cast around for the few examples of what kind of behavior followed a night like they'd just spent. "Don't we get married or something?"

"Marriage is a big thing, Kevin," she replied, leaning into him slightly and smiling softly to herself at his refreshing naïveté. "I don't think that's something that we should make a decision about after knowing each other for only two weeks and sleeping together for a single night – no matter how good that one night was."

Kevin's face fell. "Then what kind of decision do you need to make if not about getting married? That we need to get to know each other better first… spend more time together…?"

She patted his chest reassuringly. "Don't worry – I have no doubt that we'll be spending plenty of time together from now on – although whether Grandpa will be very happy about it when he gets home will be something else altogether. I… we… need to think about that – because he WILL be home eventually, and so will my Dad. They both were SO protective of me back when I was dating…"

"Oh boy," Kevin mumbled in some alarm. "They'll probably be furious with me for…"

Deb grabbed his upper arm firmly. "Listen to me. What we did last night, we did together. You aren't any more to blame than I am – and I'll be damned if I'll let you get any more chewed on than I get. I love you," she stretched up and kissed him again, "and we're in this together now, you and I. I'm not sorry we made love last night, Kevin – not one bit."

"I'm still dead," Kevin knew instinctively. "Sydney warned me…"

"Don't tell me you're regretting it now," Deb asked softly with eyes wide and vulnerable.

Kevin's arms swept around the velour bathrobe and pulled her close to him so he could nuzzle her neck, relishing again the press of her body against his. "Only insofar as I've gotten you into trouble with your father and grandfather. For myself, I'm not sorry either. I never knew I could love someone so much."

"Then don't worry about Grandpa and Daddy – I can take care of myself with those two," Deb reassured him as she leaned a little, and then pushed herself out of his arms again. "But, you see, there really are a few other things I need to think about – plans I have to make. When I used to think about my future, you weren't in it – college, a career – and now I need to see how I feel about things I've taken for granted for a long time with you in the picture." She stretched up and deposited a kiss on his cheek. "Let me take a shower while you get some breakfast around. We'll talk when I come down again. I promise." And with that, she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door firmly behind her.

Kevin stared at the closed door for a long moment. It was a revelation to think that Deb had to rethink her entire future to include him. Back in the house with Vernon, he'd only been able to know that each day would be exactly like the next. Since he'd been liberated, his days had been so unpredictable he'd not even tried to plan from one day to the next. But Deb had had long-term goals and plans – many of which evidently would need rethinking.

No wonder Sydney had warned him that taking this step would open a whole new world of troubles and possibilities! And his mentor's warning hadn't even touched on the nightmare that Deb had refused to discuss as yet. About the only thing that kept him from worrying about the shape of her private thoughts was the fact that she'd said clearly that her plans needed reworking to include HIM. That she loved him and they were 'in this together.'

He sighed and went back into his room to throw on a clean tee shirt and toss yesterday's clothing into the hamper before heading downstairs to get breakfast around for the two of them, as she had suggested.

Colonel Fox held a copy of the fax that General Curtis had just sent to Captain Lewis out to Admiral Samson, and then he waited while the Admiral read that missive and the one he'd handed him earlier – a transcript of the taped conversation between General Curtis and a man identified by the trace on the phone call as George Canfield, Senator from Montana – very carefully. "I take it you have a surveillance team on Captain Lewis?" the Admiral asked slowly.

"Yes, sir. I'd just like your permission to apprehend Captain Lewis with the missing documents from the Pentagon archive in hand, sir – and hopefully with the rest of it too."

"Do we have enough on these military jokers to put them away?" Samson asked, putting the fax on his desk and folding his hands over it.

"Between phone tap and DNA evidence gathered from Colonel Stiller's knife – which came in last night late with a positive match – we have them on, depending on who we're talking about here, conspiracy, conduct unbecoming, theft of government property, battery… And that's just for starters. We catch Lewis with the stolen archive data, we have possession of stolen property and even more evidence of conspiracy." Fox clasped his hands behind his back and assumed an at ease posture in front of the Admiral. "I'm not sure that we're going to have a much better opportunity to reclaim those files and find out just what the hell these guys have been up to, sir – which could amount to breaking any number of international treaties, not to mention slop over into treason in places."

Admiral Samson leaned back in his chair and rubbed the side of his nose thoughtfully as he pondered the situation. "I tend to agree with you, Colonel. Alright – you have my permission to execute a search warrant and an arrest warrant on Captain Lewis the moment you are certain that he has at least part of the missing documentation in his possession. Just make sure that he DOES have it before you move on him – we tip our hand NOW without adequate justification, we give notice to the rest of the pack to start cutting bait and running. Do you catch my drift, son?"

"Yes, sir!" Fox understood completely. There was another whole side to this investigation that he wasn't even privy to except what the Admiral shared with him. He didn't want to jeopardize that at all. "We want him red-handed – and we'll wait until we KNOW we have him red-handed before we move, sir."

"Dismissed," Samson saluted the Colonel and then reached for his telephone while the man strode briskly from his office. "Jenny, call the office of Senator Ashland and ask her for me if she's free for lunch – tell the secretary or whoever you speak to here that it's VERY important that I speak with her right away."

"Yes, sir," his secretary replied.

Samson rose and walked slowly to look out the window of his office onto the center green of the Pentagon building. His main concern now was whether or not the civil end of this skunk hunt was ready for the shit to hit the rotating blades. Once they started to round up the military end of this little escapade, he knew the civvies involved in the conspiracy were bound to try to dart for their rabbit holes. And that couldn't be allowed to happen. They needed to catch ALL of them, at once.

"Miss Parker, Mr. Atlee's here to see you," Mei-Chiang announced over the intercom.

"Send him right in!" she replied and closed the folder that she was reading as she waited for her Security Chief to come through the door. "What's the news?" she demanded the moment the door was closed behind him. His face was somber, and she caught her breath. "Oh God, please don't tell me…"

"North Carolina State Troopers just faxed a report to the Blue Cove PD, and the PD called me. Sydney's car has been found – they arrested a young punk for speeding and reckless driving. In the back seat was one of the bottles of whiskey that Sydney bought, along with the receipt. The bottle was empty – and the punk isn't talking. Turns out the punk is wanted in Boston and Dover both for car theft and assault and battery." Sam put out his hands in a gesture of defeat. "No Sydney — just his keys in the ignition."

"Where the hell IS he?" Miss Parker demanded in anxious frustration and rose to pace back and forth behind her desk. "A grown man can't just up and vanish…"

"Jarod did a very good job of it back when, ma'am," Sam reminded her cautiously, knowing that she wasn't in the mood for being contradicted very much at the moment. "And we know who taught Jarod everything he knows."

She sighed and stopped her pacing with one hand on her hip and one pinching the skin over her nose again. "I know, I know. But if he wasn't in the car in North Carolina, then he could still be here – close." She looked up at him. "Send out more sweepers. I want Blue Cove combed like it's never been combed before. Go door to door, literally. And when you're done combing Blue Cove, fan out into the outlying area. There's a lot of empty beach and back roads that he might have been taken down by that little bastard…"

"What if we aren't finding him because he doesn't want to be found?" Sam asked quietly, voicing the unspeakable.

Miss Parker sat down in her chair and put her face in her hands at her desk. "I don't know that Sydney is capable enough of clear thinking right now to know WHAT he wants or doesn't want," she stated tiredly. "I do know that he needs to be back on that damned couch in the den, taking care of his leg and holding us all together." She raised her head and looked at her Security Chief and friend. "I hadn't realized how much we all depend on him until just today – he's Deb's hope for sanity, Kevin's guide to a normal life, Davy's mentor AND grandfather…"

"And you depend on him as much as any of the rest of them," Sam said softly and then shrugged at her when her expression changed to one of surprise. "I'm not unobservant, Miss Parker. I can see how things are."

"I know you do," she replied, her face softer. "I think I depend on you too – and Broots – as much as I do Syd." And before Sam could start to squirm in embarrassment, she said, "Thanks for the update, Sam. Now — what's the news on Ziegler?"

"No movement on that front for the moment," he shook his head at her. "I'll let you know if I hear anything." He looked down at her. "We'll find him, Miss Parker."

"Soon, Sam. Please? Soon?"

He couldn't answer that.

Chuck Whelan picked up the telephone. "NSA. Whelan."

"This is Sergeant John Wilkes, Virginia State Trooper. I understand that you have a man by the name of Phillip Baldwin working for you?"

Chuck sighed. "It seems that the whole nation is wanting a piece of Phil Baldwin today," he commented dryly. "Yes, he works for me."

"Do you know if he has any next of kin?" Wilkes' voice inquired in a quiet and businesslike tone.

"Next of kin?" Chuck started. "What has happened?"

"Mr. Baldwin's SUV swerved off a mountain road late last night. Mr. Baldwin was killed on impact. Now, as to my question…"

"Where was this accident?" Chuck was taking notes quickly.

"White Cloud Lake Road."

"Officer Wilkes, as an agent of the National Security Agency, I'm officially requesting that you seal the accident scene and all personal effects of Mr. Baldwin pending the arrival of one of my agents and an agent of the FBI. Is that clear?"

"No, sir. All I wanted was…"

"I'll see to it that my people have all the information about Mr. Baldwin that you'll need to know for your report. Your primary task now is to make certain that no unauthorized person touches that accident scene or Mr. Baldwin's vehicle. Is that clear?"

"Sir…"

"Give me your superior, Sergeant," Chuck sighed and then waved frantically through his office door for the first person to pay attention to him to approach. He covered the phone's mouthpiece. "Go notify Agent Gotham and Agent Gillespie of the FBI that I need to speak to them immediately. Place a seal on Phil Baldwin's office and assign a guard. Only Agents Gotham and Gillespie will be allowed to re-enter."

"Mr. Whelan, my name is Gary Lovett, and I'm the Captain of the Virginia State Troopers' substation in…"

"Look, I don't care where you are. I am an agent of the National Security Agency. A man being sought by my office and the FBI was just killed in a traffic accident on…" He consulted his notes. "…White Cloud Lake Road. I want that accident scene sealed until my people can get there. This is a matter of national security, Captain."

"I don't know if I can do that without…" the Captain hedged.

"I'll have a warrant for you when my people get there, if that's the issue. It will be a federal warrant – and it will cover the accident scene and all personal effects of Mr. Baldwin, whether in the car still or on his person when he arrived at the hospital DOA. Where is the vehicle in question now?"

"Still halfway down the mountainside," Captain Lovett answered in surprise. "It's gonna take the tow truck at least another half-hour to get up there and get set up to pull it up the side of the mountain."

"Leave it where it is, Captain," Chuck ordered firmly. "I want my people to see it in place."

"If that's what you want…" The State Trooper didn't sound very convinced, but: "As long as you or your people have a valid warrant with you when you get here…"

"We'll be on our way immediately," Chuck said quickly. "You can expect Agents Gotham of my office and Gillespie of the FBI."

"I'll take note of that," Lovett drawled slowly.

Gotham and Gillespie were waiting outside his office as he hung up the phone. "Well?" Sylvie asked.

"Phil's dead," Chuck announced with no introduction. "Killed in a traffic accident in Virginia. He was on a White Cloud Lake Road – Sylvie, check and see whether he owned any property up in that area, and then you and Gillespie get your butts up there. I've had the troopers seal the accident scene – I'm betting that he was spooked by the failed INS raid and was going to ground, and that means that there's a good chance that he had the evidence we both are looking for either with him or where he was headed."

"I'm on it," Sylvie announced and headed past Gillespie back toward her own office.

"It couldn't be that easy, could it?" Gillespie asked rhetorically.

"Sure would be nice if something around here was for a change," Chuck sighed. "Lemme tell you, life in the 'spook' lane ain't all it's cracked up to be! A little bit of straightforward evidence and no landmine disclosures sure would make life a little easier right now…"

Crystal stared at the house across the street, noticing for the first time that the car at which Kevin had stood talking to the man inside was once more parked on the street – and the same man or someone who looked just like him was sitting there. The man looked as if he was reading a newspaper, but as she watched, he lifted his head often to gaze up the street and then tip his head so that he could use his mirror to check behind him. A bodyguard, she guessed, or somebody had a stakeout on the place.

Still, the old man she'd left behind in the alleyway behind the old diner needed help, if the bleeding was any indication. Not exactly sure if this was the wisest way to go about things, she took a deep breath to screw up her courage and started across the street toward the house. She could almost feel the eyes of the man in the car boring into her back as she walked up the driveway and then the sidewalk to the front door and then knocked.

It was a long moment before she heard the sounds of locks being disengaged on the door, which then opened to reveal a very surprised Kevin. "What the hell do you want?" he demanded with a scowl that turned slightly concerned. "And what the hell happened to you, anyhow?"

"Are you missing somebody you know?" Crystal asked, ignoring the second question.

"What do you mean, am I missing someone?" he asked back warily.

"Look," she moved her weight to one foot and planted one hand on a hip. "There's this guy – someone I know… kinda messed him up pretty bad – kicked him and knocked him around – and he needs some help."

"Kevin? Who is it?" asked a woman's voice from within the house, and Deb came up behind him and put a familiar hand on his shoulder. "What's going on?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out," he replied gently and then turned back to Crystal. "Why the hell do you think I'd know this person?"

"Well, he talked in his sleep last night," she answered tiredly, "and I think he mentioned your name – along with a couple of others. Do you know of a Jacob – or a Jarod?"

"My God!" Deb breathed. "That must be Grandpa she's talking about!"

"Deb, get her cleaned up – I'm calling the Centre," Kevin exclaimed, grabbing Crystal's arm and pulling her into the house without warning.

"Kevin – let's just take her out to Joe and go get Grandpa," Deb urged, grabbing at Kevin's arm as he sped by. "If he's hurt…"

"He's hurt. He's bleeding here." Crystal put her hand on her side, right at about the same place that both young people knew that Sydney had been shot weeks earlier.

"C'mon!" Kevin grabbed Crystal's hand again and this time dragged her out the front door of the house and across the yard toward the car. "Joe!" he called. "She knows where Sydney is. We have to go find him…" He opened the passenger door and pushed Crystal inside, then opened the back door for both himself and Deb to climb into the back seat.

"Hop in," the sweeper said as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed quickly. "Yeah – this is Joe on Washington Street, Mr. Atlee. We just had a report of someone who could match Sydney's description – we're going to check it out."

"Where the hell are you going?" Sam demanded.

"Where is he?" Joe turned to Kevin, who turned to Crystal.

"The alley behind the Morning Star Diner."

"In an alley," Joe reported. "I'll call back if it turns out to be…"

"Hurry!" Crystal urged the huge man, shaking his arm with a bravery she didn't know she had. "He's hurt."

Joe disconnected the call and put the car in gear, squealing the tires as he sped off.

Sam stared at the dead handset as if it could tell him whether it would be wiser to wait until he got Joe's report rather than raise Miss Parker's hopes, or whether it would be wiser for him to call her now so that she could be ready for whatever condition he'd be in when he was found – IF it was him at all.

Emily stared at her mother as if she'd just grown horns from her head. "You're doing what?"

Margaret took another sip of her coffee. "I said that I'm going to be going back to Delaware with Jarod for a little bit."

"WHY?" Emily moved slowly to the kitchen table and sat down slowly next to her mother. "You told me a long time ago that you never wanted to set foot in…"

"I know what I said, sweetheart," Margaret told her gently, putting a hand on her daughter's arm and patting it. "But considering everything else that's gone on lately, and considering that that's going to be where Jarod lives from now on, I think the time has come for me to make my peace with the place." She sipped on her coffee again. "And I've decided that I need to meet this Sydney that took care of Jarod all those years."

"And then chased him from on end of the country to the other for years…"

"Just like Missy did — and I thought you said you LIKED Missy." Margaret replied pointedly.

Emily blinked. "That's different."

"No, it's not." Margaret patted her arm again and then withdrew her hand. "If we were wrong about Missy, then it's possible that we were wrong about Sydney too. Jarod cared enough about him to go back to him after your father died — and even though it took me a long time to understand, now I know it was because Sydney is just as much a father to him as your father was. Maybe even more, because was he there while Jarod was growing up, and we weren't."

"That still doesn't explain…"

"Think, Em. If this Sydney is a decent enough character who just had the misfortune of working for the wrong people — if he did what he did because it was the only way he could see to protect him…"

Emily shook her head. "Mom, there IS no excuse for some of the things that man did — you've seen the DSA's, you know this."

Margaret drained the rest of her coffee and got up to put her cup in the sink. "I don't want to defend the man to you, Emily — I'm still not totally convinced he deserves any defense at all. But the only way for me to find THAT out for sure is to go there and meet him face to face — to see what he has to say for himself." She turned around to face her daughter, leaning back against the kitchen counter. "Jarod said that Sydney recently found out that HIS life had been manipulated by the Centre when HE was younger too."

"Yeah, right…" Emily shook her head in disbelief and rose. "Look, I know you want to maybe see what kind of man it was that raised your son — and as a mother, I can appreciate why you feel you need to do this. But I'm not going to buy that anybody with a lick of decency in them would have done what he did — for as long as he did." She shook her head again and then sighed. "Whatever. How long are you going to be gone?"

"Just a week or so," Margaret replied, returning to her seat. "I'd like to help Sprite settle into her new home a little too, if truth be told." Her face grew soft. "I'm going to miss that little one — not to mention that I'm looking forward to getting to know Davy a little better too."

"I just hope you know what you're doing, Mom," Emily said in a warning tone. "Even IF the Centre isn't chasing us anymore, it seems that people to go to Delaware end up staying there permanently. THIS is our home now, you know…"

Margaret smiled as she realized that this was the first time that Emily had ever had to genuinely share her mother long-distance with another sibling. "I know it is, Em. And I'm coming home when my visit is concluded — and I have NO intentions of moving to Delaware to stay. I promise."

Emily cast a chocolate brown gaze of complete skepticism at her mother that so resembled Jarod's that Margaret's heart skipped a beat. "That's what Jarod said, just before he left. And we know how THAT turned out…"

Fox waited a full minute after Captain Lewis had disappeared into the self-storage yard before picking up his walkie-talkie. "Meyers, go into the office, show the man our warrant and find out which storage unit belongs to Lewis – quick!"

Meyers jumped from the passenger seat of their sedan and trotted into the storage facility office, then came trotting back out a short time later. "Unit 68 – down this line and just around the corner at the end to the right."

Fox maneuvered the car down the narrow lane between buildings until they were only a few yards from the end, at which point he parked and climbed out. Behind him, a pair of MPs clambered from the sedan that had followed close on his bumper. Together, the four men moved quietly up to the corner and let Fox peek around the edge of the metal building. A doorway stood open next to Lewis' parked car, with no sign of the Captain.

Fox signaled, and the MP's moved quietly out and around the parked vehicle so that they were on the other side of the door, patiently waiting for Fox's signal. Fox and Meyers slipped up to the door. Inside the small room they could hear the sounds of rummaging and a brief swear word. Fox nodded, and all of them pulled out their revolvers and charged into the room.

"Captain Craig Lewis, you are under arrest for conspiracy and conduct unbecoming to an officer," Fox barked, startling the man badly – which was the intent, for the MP's took advantage of his very brief lapse to grab him by the arms and haul him up into a standing posture. Once certain of their man being in their control, and while Meyers busied himself with relieving the Navy officer of his sidearm and other potential weapons, as well as his key ring, Fox ambled over to the open box on the floor and peered inside. There, with clear markings, was the missing documentation for Black Hole. And there were three identical boxes below that one, each with identifying marks from the Pentagon Archives.

"And, it seems, we've found our missing data," Fox announced with a slow grin that made Lewis' face turn pale. "I wonder what else we'll find when we execute a search warrant for your office and apartment?" At the grim look on the Navy man's face at that thought, Fox gestured for the MP's to remove Lewis from the shed. "I want you to go in with Lewis – make sure that you take a LONG time getting him into custody too," Fox told him meaningfully, then turned to the other MP. "As for you, I want this locker sealed and an armed guard posted until the information in it has been removed to government custody."

"Yes, sir!" the MP snapped to attention and then took charge of the key ring that Meyers handed him.

Fox pulled out his cell phone and dialed. "This is Colonel Fox," he told Admiral Samson's secretary. "I need to speak to the Admiral."

"Samson here," was the almost immediate response.

"We found it all," Fox announced triumphantly. "He led us straight to everything that Harris managed to sneak out of the archives. I have it under armed guard pending a proper forensics team." He grinned at the frustrated face of the Navy man sitting in the back seat of the MP's sedan, his hands cuffed behind him. "I recommend that you send in the other teams and apprehend Curtis and Harris before they can destroy any evidence that THEY may have in their possession."

"I know you'd like to be in on those arrests, Colonel," the Admiral said sympathetically, "and I wish we dared wait for your return to execute those warrants. But I assure you, your part in this investigation will be well-documented, and you will receive all the proper credit for your outstanding efforts."

"Thank you, sir," Fox beamed, "but make sure you have those other two in custody first – and then we can start with the congratulations."

The Admiral's dark face lit up with a surprised smile. "Indeed, Colonel. But I still want to buy you a drink when the day's over."

"Admiral," Fox exclaimed in surprise and pride, "it would be my pleasure to accept that drink, sir."

"Very good, sir. Secure the documentation and return to DC."

"Yes, sir!" Fox disconnected the call and grinned at Meyers. "That's one…"

Jarod leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers beneath his nose and watched as Dr. Charles Peterson patiently won the grudging trust of yet another small client. The newly graduated pediatric psychiatrist showed the kind of talent with the young that would take him far and benefit a good many people over the course of a career – and Jarod was content to play some small part in getting the man on his feet and established in a practice. It would be good to know that he was leaving all his young patients in such good care – it made leaving the practice, and them, far less painful and difficult. Even Ethan had agreed that Peterson had been the ideal choice for Jarod's replacement – and the three of them seemed to be already on good terms, a development that promised to keep the practice thriving later on when he was gone.

Comfortable now that Peterson was walking the child down the treatment path properly, Jarod allowed part of his attention to wander a little. Briefly he wondered if there had been any word on Sydney's whereabouts – but he was sure that if there had been, Missy would have notified him immediately. She knew how close he was to his former mentor, how much the older man meant to him. She would call the moment she knew anything.

His thoughts then wandered directly to the only other topic that had occupied him for the last day or so – the upcoming court appointment less than twenty-four hours away. He would have to talk to Ginger that night – prepare her for talking to a stranger, actually speaking in words to someone she didn't know, for the first and hopefully last time as a ward of the courts. He'd have to make sure to ask his mom to help get her ready in the morning too – Ginger would literally and figuratively sparkle if she could have her 'buffa-fies' in her hair. Anything to prove beyond a doubt that she was better off as HIS daughter…

His attention was once more caught up completely as Peterson concluded the therapy session and managed to get a hug from the little boy before smiling and walking mother and son to the office door. The tall, thin man turned back to the owner of the office. "He's a sweet kid."

"Most of them are, underneath it all," Jarod agreed, grabbing up his coffee cup and standing. "The ones that aren't 'nice' to start with eventually get there generally as time goes by and you work through the issues that have them acting out. So much of it is a question of trust and respect – I think more than any technique, just treating the kids like valid human beings with feelings and the right to express themselves is the key to overcoming obstacles."

"Well," Peterson bent over the desk and found his own coffee cup and followed Jarod down the hall to the supply room with the coffeepot, "I had a chance to meet one of your success stories the other day while you were out." The shockingly light blue eyes were filled with admiration. "I read the file after I met the boy – you took him from being on the verge of juvenile hall for assault and battery to being a very nice and kind person."

"You mean Terry," Jarod nodded. "He was one of the special ones."

"It's going to take a while…"

Jarod shook his head. "You'll find the ways that suit you best," he reassured his replacement. "Neither Ethan nor I are expecting you to be another me – you'll find your own modes and techniques." Jarod sipped at the fresh coffee. "How goes the move – does your wife like the new house?"

"She's never lived this close to the ocean before," Peterson grinned. "She has this horrible sunburn on her nose and forehead from spending all day at the beach yesterday, while it was foggy…"

"Oh, yeah," Jarod grinned, remembering his first few weeks on the California coast. "Just because you can't see the sun doesn't mean it can't get to you."

"What about you?" Peterson asked, propping his behind against the shelving filled with office supplies. "Are you all packed and ready to go? I heard Cindy say that tomorrow is your last day…"

"Friday will be," Jarod said. "I have one patient in the morning who wants one more session – and then the works will be all yours. I should be able to get everything else packed that afternoon and the bigger pieces shipped off. We'll probably leave on Saturday."

"You aren't working tomorrow then?"

Jarod shook his head. "Tomorrow's the court date – and if everything goes as I hope, I think I'll be too excited to concentrated. Besides," he looked at the tall young man with confidence, "you have to solo sometime."

"I haven't quite figured out how you're concentrating NOW," Peterson admitted with a smile. "If it were me, and I were on the verge of having an adoption finalized, I'd be like a new father waiting for the baby to be born."

Jarod grinned. "Just because you can't see the butterflies in my stomach at the thought that something will go wrong doesn't mean they aren't there, Charles." His mind brought forth the smiling face of his little daughter – almost-daughter. "Why else do you think I've been more than happy to let YOU handle the therapy sessions today?"

Peterson laughed out loud. "You hide your emotions well, Doctor."

"You'll learn," Jarod assured him of that too. "It's a survival skill in this line of work."

"Gamma?"

Margaret looked down at her little granddaughter. "What, Sprite?"

"Daddy says we go 'way soon." Bright, dark eyes peered up at her.

Margaret dried her hands on a small towel and moved over to the kitchen table, where she sat down and drew Ginger closer. "That's right – you're going to go with your Daddy to live with him and Mommy and Davy in a new place."

"You der too?" The little girl blinked up into her grandmother's face trustingly.

"At first," Margaret told her gently. "But Grandma lives here – so after a little while, I'll come home again, and you'll be with your Daddy and Mommy…"

"Gamma not 'tay?"

"No, baby. Grandma won't stay – but she'll come to visit often."

The dark eyes were clouding over with concern and distress. "Wha' abou' Ee-fan? He 'tay here?"

Margaret nodded. "That's right. Ethan, your Aunt Emily and Uncle Nathan and Sammy and Jay all will stay here. But like me, they'll probably come to visit you sometimes, and you'll be back for visits too someday…"

"Me wan' you 'tay der." The little face had taken on a decidedly unhappy expression.

"My home is here," Margaret put her arms around Ginger and held her close. "And I'm going to miss you very much too. But you're not leaving for another couple of days yet, and I'll be going with you when you go. You get to fly in an airplane, you know…"

Ginger wasn't being sidetracked. "Me wan' you 'tay der," she repeated.

"But you'll have your Mommy and Davy back," Margaret reminded her. "We can talk on the telephone, and we'll visit each other. Besides, you have a Grandpa waiting for you there. From what I hear, he's a very special person."

"Gamma." Ginger was clinging tightly now. "Me wan' Gamma 'tay. Gamma make…" She searched for the right word to express herself properly. "…tafe."

"Tafe?" Margaret repeated the word to herself until she was sure that she understood exactly what her little granddaughter was telling her. "Safe? Grandma makes you safe?" She rubbed circles on the little girl's back. "Doesn't Daddy make you safe too?"

Ginger nodded against her grandmother's bosom. "Nee' Gamma too."

"I'll be there at first," Margaret promised soberly. "But soon you'll have your Mommy and Davy AND Daddy to keep you safe. And you'll even have Sam there – remember Sam?" She gestured, indicating the size of the huge Security man who seemed to be a fixture in Miss Parker's life.

"Gamma…" Ginger whimpered, knowing that she wasn't explaining her fears properly yet and wanting to desperately. She had to make Gamma understand. "Big Man 'kary. Me 'memmer…"

Margaret frowned. "You remember? But you'd never met Sam…"

Ginger shook her head. "'Nuvver Big Man, Gamma – comed my room in the dark. Him hurted me…"

"Hush!" Margaret held the child tightly, not wanting to hear more. Jarod had spoken briefly and poignantly about the abuse Ginger had survived, only barely suggesting anything of the sort that Ginger seemed to be remembering. "Not all Big Men hurt, baby – Sam is a good man. Even your Daddy calls him a friend."

"Dis Big Man wivved wiv us, Gamma. Da woman not care…" Ginger shivered and choked back long-repressed tears.

Why was it that she was telling HER all of this, Margaret wondered as she consoled the child as best she could. She needed to tell Jarod what was coming out of his daughter now that the wall of silence had been breeched – and what Missy might expect to hear once she had finally won the trust of the child.

"Your Mommy will care very much," she promised her gently. "I can promise you that nothing like that will ever happen to you again."

"Gamma make 'tafe," Ginger insisted. "'Tay wiv me."

"For a little while," Margaret reiterated. "But I promise that before I leave, you'll know of someone else who can make you safe too. OK?"

Ginger nodded, but only after a long pause. She sniffled. "Miss Gamma."

"I'm not gone yet, Sprite," Margaret soothed her and kissed her hair. "I'm still right here."

"Wuv you, Gamma."

Margaret's eyes filled with tears. It was the first time she'd heard Ginger express any emotions at all. "I love you too, Sprite. Very much."

"There!" Crystal's finger pointed out the narrow alley.

Joe swung the Centre sedan between the two buildings and started down the way slowly, for there wasn't much room to maneuver around trash containers and other detritus scattered along the length of the dingy little lane. He had half of his attention watching the reactions of the tattered girl next to him, and his attention paid off when he saw her face change just moments before she pointed again. "There! There he is!"

The sedan came to a halt and all four of them sprang from the car and hurried to the side of the man sprawling limply against the doorjamb at the back of the diner.

"Grandpa!" Deb called and bent, reaching for a hand.

"Sydney!" Kevin added his call to Deb's, his face folding in concern when he saw that Crystal's report had been correct in that the front of Sydney's shirt was indeed soaked in blood – apparently from where the gunshot wound had torn open yet again.

Joe had his cell phone out in a flash and dialed. "Mr. Atlee – we've found him. We'll need an ambulance – he's been bleeding pretty badly."

"Is he alive?" Sam wanted to know.

As Joe waited to frame his answer, Sydney stirred and gradually opened his eyes, struggling to focus on the small knot of people surrounding him. "Yeah, he's alive – quite a bit worse for wear, but alive."

"I'll call it in," Sam told the sweeper briskly. "Get Kevin to do as much first aid for him as he can while you're waiting. Stay there until we get to you."

"Yes, sir!" Joe disconnected. "There's a first aid kit in the truck, Kevin," he nudged the young Pretender. "Mr. Atlee suggests you see what you can do while we're waiting for help."

"Deb?" Sydney asked groggily, wishing his vision would clear.

"I'm here, Grandpa," Deb smoothed her hand up his arm soothingly. "We've found you, and you'll be OK now."

Sydney's eyes slowly focused on the dark-haired girl who took Kevin's spot next to him when the young man raced to the car for the first aid kit. Tired chestnut looked down into concerned dark eyes. "You wouldn't let it go, would you?"

"Nope," she replied saucily. "Did you really expect me to?"

Sydney turned his gaze to the man who was obviously a sweeper – probably the man stationed normally in front of his house during the daytime. "She needs to be seen too," he said tiredly.

Joe nodded after another look at the girl who had led them here. "I'll see to it, Doctor."

Crystal frowned. "Doctor?"

But Sydney's strength was finally at its end. He slumped against Deb and closed his eyes, letting go of reality and slipping into blackness.

Feedback, please:


	17. New Directions

Resolutions – 17

New Directions

by MMB

Crystal looked around her and began to shudder as the elevator went down into the ground rather than up — then realized that she'd gotten into an elevator with no UP to go TO. She had heard people talking about "The Centre" in town in the time since she'd arrived, but none that she'd heard speaking had ever been IN the Centre. She still wasn't very happy that she was going to actually visit the place. But, as the massive man at her elbow had informed her as he helped her into the ambulance, "Sydney said that you needed to be seen, and so that's what we're going to do."

She had been examined quickly by one of the ambulance medics and then loaded into the vehicle with the man she now knew as Sydney — DOCTOR Sydney something, no less. And when she would have bolted once the ambulance stopped and everyone started to get out, the huge man who had arrived with the ambulance had positioned himself at her elbow and had taken hold of her firmly — although not painfully. He then made it clear that she WASN'T going anywhere other than where they wanted her to go. Now that they had arrived, evidently the direction they were taking her was Down.

Sam looked down as he felt a shudder in the elbow of the tattered young woman that had so unexpectedly helped them find Sydney. After Joe had told him what Sydney had said just before passing out, Sam had made it his business to take responsibility for her. From the looks of her face, Sydney had been right — she did need to have medical attention. No doubt Miss Parker would be wanting to talk to her as well — hopefully after they had gotten her cleaned up a bit. Sam's nose wrinkled at the variety and possible sources of the smells that were wafting from her.

But he had to admire the way the young woman was holding up to being swallowed whole by the might and power of the Centre. It had swooped down around her and a pretty bedraggled looking Sydney on that dingy backdoor stoop and was now carrying the two of them along in an inexorable tide. The shudder was the first indication that her façade of courage was anything less than rock-solid. "What's your name, kid?" he asked kindly as they traveled down toward the newly reopened Renewal & Medical wing.

"Crystal," she answered in a steady monotone without looking up into her keeper's face. "And I'm not a kid."

Sam's lips quirked in a small and understanding smile. He could remember being that age and trying to act tough and impervious well enough to know the bravado in her tone of voice intimately. "Well, in case nobody's said it yet, Crystal, you should know that we're all very grateful to you for helping us find Sydney. He had us pretty worried."

Crystal focused her eyes on the still form of the man lying on a gurney next to her. "Who is he anyway?" She finally looked up into the face of the man who held her elbow.

Sam nodded. She deserved at least that much. "His name is Dr. Sydney Green. He's the head of the Psychogenics Department here… a psychiatrist," he added at the quick brush of confusion across her features.

"A shrink? Oh, that's rich," she burst out in a cynical chuckle, shaking her head.

The elevator door slid silently open, and Sam held Crystal back while Sydney's gurney was removed first, heading down the hallway for the first set of swinging doors. Sam then steered Crystal down the same hallway and through the second set of doors into a room where the sterile white curtains helped disguise the fact that the room was deep below ground. Sam pointed to the examination table. "Get up on that," he directed.

"I don't think so," Crystal balked and headed for the one straight chair in the room and planted herself in that instead. "How do I know that you don't intend to run all kinds of evil experiments on me? You should HEAR the speculation in town…"

"I can imagine," Sam's lips quirked again and then remarked cryptically, "The good news is that we aren't in that kind of business anymore." He bent and picked her up bodily and sat her down on the exam table and then put his hands on both sides of the table near her thighs to prevent her from jumping down again. "Look, if we wanted to use you for our evil purposes, don't you think we wouldn't have sedated you a long time ago and saved both you and ourselves a whole lot of fight? Use your head, kid. This isn't a conspiracy theory come to life."

The dark eyes flashed in anger and some fear. "How do I know I can trust you?" she challenged him.

"Because you did us a big favor and helped us find a friend of mine," Sam answered simply. "I owe you. We all do."

The stark simplicity of the answer astounded her, and some of the fear faded as a white-garbed doctor and a nurse entered the room. Under their gentle hands, Crystal finally relented and allowed herself to stretch out supine on the table while they began fussing over her. "Now that you're in good hands, I'm going to go check on Sydney," Sam announced to her, backing away at last. "I'll be back in a little bit."

"Take your time," she called back to him in a chipper tone, surrendering to her fate. "I don't think I'm going anywhere."

She heard the big man chuckle. "Hang in there, kid."

Admiral Samson smiled to himself as he walked down the corridors of power in the Pentagon with a contingent of MP's at his heels. It had been a long time since he'd come up through the ranks — he'd been what he himself had once caustically labeled a "desk jockey" for far too many years. It felt GOOD to be in the thick of things again — actually leading men into action, even if it was merely executing an arrest warrant.

He turned a corner and moved into the outer office of General Curtis, knowing that at this same moment, a similar contingent of MP's under the leadership of his own attaché was walking through the doors of Colonel Harris. "Don't bother announcing us," he cautioned the lieutenant sitting behind the desk. "Just move over there with and stand next to that officer there for the next few minutes, unless you'd like to join your boss in the brig." The pale lieutenant immediately stood and did as he was told while Samson motioned for the rest of his contingent to follow him. He knocked on the inner door.

"Who is it?" Curtis' gravelly voice inquired from within.

"Someone you really didn't want to see," Samson announced and pushed through the door.

"Is there something I can do for you, Admi…" Curtis' words cut off as he saw the MP's behind the member of the Joint Chiefs. "What is this?"

"This is a valid arrest warrant with your name on it," Samson stated, pulling the document from his breast pocket. "You will come with these gentlemen now."

"I'll need…" Curtis began reaching for the telephone, only to have the portly black Admiral's hand suddenly fall very heavily on his and keep him from picking up the receiver.

"If you need to make a call, you can do it after you've been processed," Samson told him in grim satisfaction. "General Curtis, you are under arrest for conspiracy, conduct unbecoming and aiding and abetting of a felony."

"I demand to see a lawyer," Curtis spat.

Samson merely smiled at him. "I'm sure that can be arranged — you can call him as soon as you've been fingerprinted and charges filed." The older officer looked up at the burly officer at Curtis' left. "You may take the General away, Captain." He then pointed to another of the MP's. "This office and its contents are to be sealed until my team has had a chance to go through it — nobody is to enter except myself and those demonstrating they are working under my direct authority, is that clear?"

"Yes, sir!" the MP replied.

The Admiral pulled out his cell phone and punched two buttons. The moment the voice answered on the other end, he growled, "Well?"

"Harris is in custody, sir — his office has been sealed."

"Thank you, Major," he answered and disconnected, then punched up another call. "This is Admiral Samson at the Pentagon. Is Senator Ashland available? Yes, I'll hold…" While he waited, he moved to behind Curtis' desk and sat down in the comfortable chair and began sorting distractedly through the papers on the man's desk.

"Gregory?" Becca Ashland finally came on the line. "What is it?"

"We have the military end of this thing in the bag. What news from the civilian side of law enforcement?"

"The man General Curtis and Senator Canfield were speaking about this morning — Phillip Baldwin — is dead. Two agents, one FBI and one NSA, are on their way to examine any evidence that might have been with him at the time of his death," the Senator replied. "We've also discovered that Mr. Baldwin had a cabin not far from where he was killed — and the warrant that takes custody of Mr. Baldwin's personal effects also covers the contents of the cabin."

"So when do you move on your renegade legislators, my dear?" Samson asked, running a hand through his short and steel-gray hair.

"As soon as I hear back from the FBI or NSA that we've found what we needed," Ashland answered. "Face it, Gregory, it will be fairly difficult for sitting Senators to try to just disappear during full legislative session."

"Just make sure we don't lose your half of the prize," Samson cautioned.

"I don't think we will," she reassured him. "Baldwin was running — and it only takes one good snag to ruin an entire expensive nylon, you know… All we need is for him to have the evidence of what they've been up to, and their entire house of cards flies apart."

"Keep me informed, then," Samson told her. "And I think we can meet for drinks openly now — seven o'clock at the Grey Goose? I'm inviting Colonel Fox to lift a celebratory glass."

Becca chuckled. "I'll be there with bells on. I'm not missing out on a chance to enjoy the company of TWO men in uniform…"

"I came as quickly as I could," Miss Parker cast her eyes down the Renewal & Medical corridor, waiting for her inner sense to tell her which set of swinging doors to charge through to get to her surrogate father.

Sam caught at her arm before she could move forward more than a step or two. "He's got a couple of broken ribs, the incision from his recent surgery tore open, and he damned near poisoned himself with the whiskey," he tallied the injuries Sydney had suffered, "but he's a tough old bird. The doctors are stitching him up again, and then I think they're going to want to hold him overnight for observation before turning him loose to go home again." He let go. "He's still out cold, Miss Parker."

"Damn it!" Miss Parker exploded in worry. "You know," she shook her finger at him, "Syd hasn't had a healthy day since he was shot — and that's been weeks ago now."

"I know," the Security Chief put a hand on her shoulder comfortingly, "but let's hope that he's finally finished serving his sentence at the bottom of the Wheel of Fortune for a good long time. Face it, it's a damned good thing that little tramp of a girl decided that a muttered name in the middle of a nightmare must refer to the one person she knew in Blue Cove by that name."

"Speaking of whom," Miss Parker paused, finally settling down and relaxing now that Sydney was safe and back where she could make sure he got proper care, "what do we know about this girl anyway?"

Sam shrugged. "I got a name — Crystal — now whether that's a street name or her real one is anybody's guess. From the looks and smell of things, she's been street trash for a while now."

"Where is she?"

Sam pointed to the second set of doors. "She looks like she ended up on the receiving end of a right cross — I think the doc's going to be taking x-rays to make sure nothing got busted up under there, or that she's not got a concussion or anything." He wrinkled his nose. "Then I'm going to suggest that somebody take her somewhere where she can get disinfected and a clean set of surgical scrubs while the clothes she's been wearing get burned. Not that Sydney smelled a whole lot better, though…" Sam's face registered his disgust with the whole situation, then he looked at her expectantly. "Did you call Jarod in California? He's bound to be worried…"

"I called him right after you called me," she told him. "We didn't speak long — just long enough for me to tell him that Syd had been found and that I'd talk to him tonight and give him a full report."

"Then why don't you go in and meet our unlikely heroine while I call Kevin and Deb at Sydney's and bring them up to date," Sam suggested. "I'll tell Deb to drive Kevin over to visit with Syd later this afternoon — by then, Syd should be awake again, we hope."

Miss Parker nodded and then pushed through the indicated swinging door and brushed aside the white curtain. Sam was right — the author of the rescue was tattered and filthy, and she looked like hell. The dark-haired girl was trying to lie still while the doctor daubed carefully at her the edges of her swollen eye with a swab. Miss Parker watched for a while, then asked, "Well, Doc, is she going to live?"

"Yes, ma'am," Bennett reassured his boss with a brisk nod. "She won't be looking out of the left eye for a few days and should leave off the use of makeup for a while after that, but there's no lasting damage." He looked down at Crystal. "You're lucky, young lady — I'd say that blow was strong enough to literally shatter your cheekbone, but evidently he was at an angle from you when he threw the punch." He backed away from the girl so Miss Parker could move closer.

The Centre Chairman caught at his arm. "Make arrangements for some surgical scrubs in her size, and let's get her bathed and tidied up before she gets much further." Bennett nodded and gestured for the nurse to follow him, leaving Miss Parker alone with his patient. Miss Parker moved closer so that the girl could see her out of her good eye. "Sam tells me your name is Crystal. Is that your real name?"

A suspicious and wary dark eye peered up at her. "As real as any name is," the girl quipped darkly, then struggled to prop herself up on an elbow. "Who wants to know?"

"My name is Parker — I run this place," Miss Parker answered without riling at the insolence in the girl's tone. "That's my father you helped out."

"You the shrink's daughter, eh?" Crystal looked closer into the woman's face. "And you say you run this place? Does that mean that you can spring me so I can get out of here?"

"Why? You have someplace important to go?" Miss Parker shot back skeptically. "From the looks of you, you haven't been eating well for quite a while — and frankly… Crystal, is it?… you stink."

"Yeah? Well that comes from not living where there's regular running water," Crystal remarked bitterly and then lay back down and turned away from the tall and imposing brunette, unhappy that she'd betrayed even the slightest hint of her personal situation.

"That's what I thought," Miss Parker nodded. "But, you see, running water isn't much of an issue around here — so take heart. You're going to get a bath in just a bit and some clean clothes to wear until you can get yourself something far more presentable. Once you look and smell more civilized, I'll have Sam take you up to the cafeteria where you can have whatever you want to eat, and as much of it as you want. But as for springing you, you'll have to wait until Sydney wakes up. I have a feeling he'll want to see you at least once more before you crawl back into the woodwork."

"I don't need your help…" Crystal struggled to sit up again, only to have Miss Parker's hand land on a shoulder and hold her down far too easily.

"I'm sure you're quite capable," Miss Parker responded with dry sarcasm. "But you see, what I just told you was going to happen isn't negotiable. You WILL have a bath, get yourself presentable, and then eat a good meal. Once you get a chance to talk to Sydney again, THEN we'll see about springing you. Deal?"

"Do I have a choice?" Crystal grumbled, her heart actually leaping at the chance to be clean again and eat an honest-to-God meal after so much time but unwilling to let anybody HERE know that.

Miss Parker shook her head very matter-of-factly. "Nope, you don't." She gave the girl's shoulder a pat and then moved away. "I'm sure we'll talk again before you leave here. Until then…"

"Yeah, sure…" Crystal saw the nurse enter the room with some folded blue-green material in her arms on top of folded white terrycloth. "I think my bath-time's here…sooo…"

"Sam, keep an close eye on our little guest here," Miss Parker told the sweeper in tones deliberately meant to be overheard. "I'm going to be in with Sydney."

"Yes, ma'am." The nurse led Crystal out of the examination room and down the hall, with Sam trailing along behind two paces behind. Crystal had never had the experience of being guarded quite so closely or quite so well before.

Before she could decide whether it was something she actually enjoyed or not, the nurse led her into a small dressing room with a white tiled shower enclosure just beyond. "Put your clothing in this bag here," the nurse indicated a waiting plastic bag from a wire frame, "and when you come out, put on these scrubs. I'll take care of…"

"I got it," Crystal interrupted, anxious to wash the grime of the past few weeks with Scooter away and starting to peel away her old clothing with no hesitation or embarrassment at all. The moment the nurse walked away, Sam closed the door to the bathing cubicle discretely from the corridor and turned his back to it with arms crossed. It wasn't long before he could hear the sound of water running hard.

Slowly the white SUV made the tortuous trek back up through the underbrush it had crashed through once before, the steel cable from the tow truck taut and vibrating as the winch ground and retracted. At the edge of the roadbed, Gillespie and Sylvie Gotham watched the progress as well as studied the terrain, looking for any signs of anything that might have spilled from the careening vehicle on its plummet. A short distance away, a Virginia trooper leaned back against his cruiser, observing the federal agents that he'd transported from the clearing a mountain top and a half away from the accident scene.

Gillespie could see no sign of anything that had escaped the SUV on its way down the mountainside. "Looks like everything he had is still in the car," he told Sylvie.

"Yup," she agreed. "Any idea what we're looking for?"

"Documents," Gillespie told her with a shrug. "Accountant's books, files — anything that a man intending to spend time at a fishing cabin WOULDN'T be hauling from work with him. From the transcript of the last call Canfield made to General Curtis, it seems our NSA accountant was the moneyman of the operation. With him gone, I'm betting those Senators are going to be trying to distance themselves from the military men hung out to dry already as fast and as effectively as possible. If Baldwin doesn't have the stuff with him, or if it isn't at the cabin, our end of things is up Shit Creek without a paddle except for phone tap information."

"How in the hell did all of this slip under our radar all this time?" Sylvie asked rhetorically. "I mean, from the sounds of it, these bozos have been dealing with the Centre for years — with the Centre before its recent change of heart, that is…"

"The Centre has money — LOTS of it — and that money has bought power and access," Gillespie answered. "You don't want to know where some of that money came from, or what they had to do to earn it." He shrugged. "They pulled strings to keep things quiet, and this bunch made full advantage of a corporation with few scruples and the will to do whatever the hell it wanted to for profit."

"I hear the new Chairman over there came up from the ranks," Sylvie remarked as the SUV teetered on the edge of the roadbed and then, with a groan, settled back with its tires safely on asphalt. "I wonder what made her decide to turn the place around. I mean, with all that power…"

"The woman has principles," Gillespie told her in a respectful tone. "She has brass and she suffered from the lack of scruples herself back when. The moment she got the reins, she hauled back and hasn't stopped working to turn the place around. I met her, you know…"

"What's she like?"

"Quite a lady," the FBI agent said, remembering. "I wouldn't want to cross her." He pointed. "Let's go see what our friend was carrying with him, shall we?"

A couple of good hard yanks opened the passenger side door to the front seat. "Lookie here," Gillespie crowed, pulling out a briefcase. He hauled it over to the hood of the vehicle and drew his pocketknife from his trousers pocket and pried the locked clasps open. "Bingo!" he cried, bringing Sylvie's head out of the car and over to him. "Account books," Gillespie showed her, then opened one. "Accounts receivable has a payment noted transferring funds from a Vermont consortium to a Centre bank account in the Cayman Islands, with initials 'TJ' in the margin." Gillespie scratched his head. "Wonder what that means?"

"How about a little black book of names, addresses, phone numbers and associates," Sylvie nudged Gillespie's arm with the address she'd taken from the same briefcase. "I see Harold Burns, George Canfield, Douglas Curtis, Gerald Harris,…ah! I think I found your 'TJ' — Tom Jackson."

"This is what we needed," Gillespie smiled grimly. "We got those bastards. Finally!"

"We'll need more than just notations in an address book," Sylvie reminded him and walked back to the SUV and continued her digging.

"Something tells me that between this car and the cabin up the mountain, we don't have much to worry about," Gillespie closed the briefcase again and gestured for the Virginia State Trooper to pop the trunk of his cruiser so that the briefcase could be safely stored within. "But, knowing my luck, getting more that enough wouldn't hurt at all…"

Miss Parker sat next to Sydney's bed, stroking his silvered hair back from his forehead repeatedly as she had for the past two hours. He had yet to awaken, although the doctor had assured her that it was sleep and not unconsciousness from a concussion. It would take his body some time to detoxify from the amount of alcohol he'd evidently imbibed, the doctor told her kindly — and she'd need to be patient.

She had grabbed her cell phone and proceeded to dump as many of her remaining appointments for the day on Tyler as would fit in his schedule, as well as left instructions for Mei-Chiang to reschedule anything that Tyler couldn't handle. She'd even notified Davy's afternoon sitter to be prepared to run late that day, in case Sydney didn't awaken when everybody figured he probably would. Her calls finished for the time being, she'd been beside Sydney ever since, waiting for him to wake up, to look at her again. Until he did — until she could see that she had him back again — there was no way anybody was going to pry her from her seat.

Beside her, Sydney gave a long, deep breath and slowly became aware of the gentle caresses on his forehead. His eyes fluttered sporadically for a very long while before they finally consented to open — and then it took a while for the fog to clear from his vision so that he could see clearly who was sitting next to him. Her grey eyes were full, both of tears and gratitude, and he turned his head slightly to look at her a little more fully. "Hey," he whispered.

"Hey yourself," she responded, glad to hear something like a normal tone from him. A huge load dropped away from her heart at the sound of his voice in her ear again. "That was quite some toot you took yourself on, Freud."

The chestnut eyes closed for a long moment as the memories of the afternoon and night before — those he could still recall — flooded his mind. "Parker…" he began, opening his eyes again and looking up at her pleadingly.

She shook her head. "You know, about eight years ago, I think it was, our positions were reversed. I was the one waking up with foggy memories of bourbon and telephone poles. Now granted, I didn't have to bail you out of jail… but…" She moved closer and took a very firm hold on his closest hand. "We promised each other back then that we were family — that you would help me get my feet back under me, but that the relationship it would take to do that would be a mutual one that could never be rescinded. Do you remember?"

He nodded mutely. He knew exactly where she was going — and he couldn't really blame her.

"What happened, Sydney, that you would climb into the bottom of a pair of whiskey bottles rather than come to me? I thought we promised we'd lean on each other, and not on anything or anybody else?"

"You're right, we promised," he answered slowly. "I just… I ran when everything came back to me like that…" He looked up at her with tragic eyes. "You have to understand, I had pushed aside almost all my memories of… that time… everything — I forced it into the back of my mind and shut it away. I had to — it was the only way I could survive when everyone I loved other than Jacob was led off to the gas chambers and then carted to the ovens. I wasn't ready to have it all come back at me at once." He choked on the last bit.

Miss Parker leaned over him and brushed her fingertips over his forehead again. "You don't have to relive it, Syd…"

"But that's just it, Parker," he explained in distress, "I DID begin to relive it. All I could hear was the screams from the showers… the sound of the carts hauling corpses all day and all night… the smell… It was overwhelming, and all I could think of was to get away from it." He paused, and when he continued, his voice was haunted. "All I have to do even now is close my eyes, and I'm there again. I'm still reliving it — I can't shut it away anymore, as much as I want to."

"Sydney…"

The chestnut eyes opened wide. "And then to find out that we ended up there NOT because Papa was in the resistance or because we had Jewish blood, but because the CENTRE had an interest in Jacob and me because they thought we were special. The fact that twins research was something the Nazis were interested in too was beside the point. To hear that my family was killed not because of our lineage but because the CENTRE wanted all emotional ties that we two might have with anyone but each other cut…" He caught back a sob. "And now to think that when I became a man, I stole the life and put through a living hell another special person — and became a willing part of the same machine that had done all that to me and Jacob. And in my turn, I withheld emotional support from Jarod as much to keep his focus on his work as anything else — and deliberately crushed every attempt he made to forge emotional ties with me as a surrogate parent, no matter how much I knew it was cruel…"

His hand turned in hers. "I told you once that I couldn't kill Krieg because he and I were too much alike. What I didn't know then was how much alike you and I were — how much like Jarod I was. Only my sin was to become the spitting image of that which had done me so much evil… to commit the same evil in my turn and pretend not to see what I was doing." The tears were rolling down the side of his face. "I couldn't face you, knowing the monster I really am… the monster the Centre made me…"

"Stop that, Sydney!" Miss Parker barked at him. "You are NOT a monster! You've never been a monster…"

"Not to you, perhaps, but to Jarod…"

"You listen to me!" she whispered fiercely. "You are NOT a monster, you're the father of my heart," she insisted, clinging to his hand and shaking it with the force of her emphasis. "Both of the men who claimed to be my biological father were in fact REAL monsters — so I know a monster when I see one. And you aren't a monster, I promise you, despite everything you've done. You're a victim, just like me, like Jarod. And I know how much that hurts."

She leaned her forehead into his upper arm. "I love you — you're the father I always wanted and didn't get until it was almost too late. And since then, I've leaned on you emotionally so many times that I can't remember them all now — and never, not once, have you needed to lean on me emotionally until now. But I'm right here, and I'm telling you that you CAN lean on me, Sydney. Give me the chance to give back just a small portion of what you've given me all this time."

The tears continued to pour from the chestnut eyes. "I don't deserve you," he choked in a whisper.

"I didn't deserve you that night eight years ago either," she reminded him and wiped at his tears with her fingertips. "You had put up with an awful lot of my shit for a very long time — but that still didn't stop you. You still got out of bed in the middle of the night to bail me out of my jam, and then you pieced me back together into a stronger and healthier person than I'd ever been in my life."

"That was different…"

"No, it wasn't." Her fingers stroked his forehead again. "Eight years ago we made ourselves into a new family on the strength of an agreement. I'm not letting you out of that agreement, and that's all there is to it. We're a team. And maybe the time has come for you to finally share with me that part of your life that you've always kept hidden from the both of us — from everyone. Let me in, Syd. I'm your daughter — you made me your daughter eight years ago. That gives me the right to ask this of you. Don't shut me out now."

Sydney's hand reached up and cupped Miss Parker's cheek gently. "I didn't mean to shut you out, Parker. But this is a part of myself that even I cannot face — the part that makes me ashamed of my life as a whole. Maybe I wasn't the monster to you, ma petite. But to Jarod…"

"Jarod will be home this weekend, and I think you should take that up with him then. I'm certain he'll tell you the same thing I've told you — but it may be that you need to hear it from him face to face before you'll actually believe it." She turned her head to kiss the palm lying against her cheek and caught sight of the number 54679 that had been tattooed onto the inside of his forearm all those many years ago by his Nazi captors. He caught sight of what she was looking at and tried to cover it with his other hand, but she caught the hand away. "No," she shook her head gently. "No more hiding — not from me. That is as much a part of you as anything else. I'm not afraid to hear any part of it." She ran gentle fingertips over the smooth skin and the dark numbers.

This was why he always wore long-sleeved shirts, she realized with a jolt — she couldn't even remember the last time she'd seen him in short sleeves or bare-armed, at home OR at work — he'd been denying this for as long as she could remember. It had been a long time since she'd seen the visible proof of the ordeal he had endured as a young boy. "This is as much a part of what makes you who you are as anything else that has happened to you along the way — and you don't have to worry about my rejecting anything you might tell me. We've both seen the worst we each can do, Sydney, so whatever memories bubble up, we can face them together. You'll be OK."

"I'm afraid," he admitted in an ashamed whisper. "I don't want to remember the ugliness — the things I saw and heard and… had done to me... And I'm ashamed… of what I've done…"

"I know," she soothed, brushing the backs of her fingertips across a cheek. "But I'm here." She pulled back and took hold of his hand firmly and then sandwiched it between both of hers. "I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere, no matter what you have to say. Hang onto me — let me help you. Please!"

The hand tightened around her fingers and pulled her hands to his heart. "Help me, Parker. I can't do this alone." Admitting his fear and then admitting he needed help were two of the hardest things he'd ever done in his life.

Miss Parker rested her forehead against his upper arm again. "I'm here, Sydney. I'm not going anywhere — you're not alone. I love you."

His other hand came up and held their clasped hands close. "I love you too," he gasped, tears running freely. "I don't think I knew how much until just now."

She stretched up and kissed his cheek, tasting salty tears. "You have to promise me — no more whiskey for you," she whispered. "No more hiding."

"No more," he agreed hesitantly. "I promise." He felt the pressure of her head against his shoulder return — and it was the oddest feeling to know that it was there not to draw strength from him but rather to give it BACK to him. It was a humbling experience to realize that he genuinely needed her strength, and that she was giving it to him unreservedly — unconditionally — just as he had once given it to her. Being on the receiving end of that kind of unconditional love while in a state of desperate need for the first time in so many, many years certainly made for a change in perspective.

He closed his eyes and willed himself to think of nothing but the feel of that head against his shoulder, of her hands holding tightly to his. This was what it really meant to have a daughter — that he not only had the responsibility to hold her together when she needed him but also the responsibility of letting her hold HIM together sometimes when he needed her as well. It was a lesson he wouldn't soon forget.

By now, Crystal was used to having Sam's hand at her elbow as she walked through the corridors of the Centre. She had to admit that it felt good to be rid of the layers of dirt and grime that had been beneath the worn and filthy clothing — to have clean hair hanging straight down her back, making the back of her scrub tunic wet. She had forgotten how good it felt.

Sam steered her in the direction of the elevator again, which took them up two levels to where a cafeteria had been set up in an old clerical pool. He handed her a tray and a couple of plates and then followed her as she moved slowly down the line. He noticed that she was picking the kinds of foods that she probably hadn't had in a long time — a green salad, a bowl of soup, an egg salad sandwich, and finally a bottle of cold spring water. Impressed, Sam flashed a card at the cashier and then led the girl to a table off in a corner. Crystal sat down so that she could see everything going on in the room — a little piece of habitual caution that resonated with Sam.

She closed her good eye and munched slowly and appreciatively on the fresh greens with the simple vinaigrette dressing. She hadn't had a green salad since she'd left home, and she hadn't realized how much she'd missed it. "Looks like I don't have to ask you if it tastes OK," Sam commented with a touch of humor.

Her eye popped open, and she took the time to see if he was making fun of her before answering. He wasn't. "It's been a long time," she admitted around her food, then swallowed. "I haven't had anything like this for a while."

"I think we've all figured that one out," he replied kindly. "Where are your from — originally, that is?"

"Vermont," she answered and then took a sip of the hearty chicken noodle soup and hummed with contentment.

"Do you have any family we can contact — anybody you want us to call and tell where you are and that you're alright?"

The dark eye snapped at him. "If I wanted them to know where I was, I wouldn't have run away to begin with, ya know?"

That confirmed something Sam had been suspecting. "How old are you, anyway?"

"Old enough," she bit back, stabbing at her salad viciously.

Sam's hand came out and restrained her from taking the bite of salad to her mouth. "How old?"

"Nineteen," she replied with her chin up.

"Nice try," he said without rancor, obviously dismissing the patent lie, "but I know jail bait when I see it. How about the truth this time?"

She tried to wrestle her arm free, then grumbled, "Seventeen," when it became obvious that he was far stronger than her and knew how to use that strength to keep her from moving without hurting her in the process. "And a half," she added when he released her arm again.

Sam settled back in his chair. "Why'd you run?" he asked then.

"None of your damned business!" she snapped at him. "Can I eat in peace — please?"

"Once you answer the question, perhaps," he allowed. "The fact is that since you're underage, you're going to have to come up with a pretty damned convincing story to keep me from finding out where you belong and sending you back there as soon as you're finished here."

"OK. Fine. My dad used to use me as a punching bag sometimes," she answered with a tired sigh. "Especially when he'd hit Mom enough that if he hit her again, it would show — and he COULDN'T let anybody know that he was beating on her. Appearances, you know…"

Sam's eyes narrowed. She had the attitude all right. "So you're telling me you ran away because your dad was abusing you physically?"

"You don't honestly think this is the first time I've had one of these, do you?" she asked bitterly while pointing to her swollen eye and bruised cheek. "There. Are you happy now?"

"No," he answered honestly. "I don't like to hear that anybody's been put through something like that. I lived through enough of that myself when I was a kid. But I WILL let you eat and leave off any more questions until after. Fair enough?"

The dark eye widened in surprise. She wasn't used to getting a fair shake from anybody, and this was most definitely fair — and combined with a bath and clean clothing and fresh, tasty food, made her feel as if she'd just found a treasure. "Thanks," she replied softly, genuinely grateful. She looked down into her food and concentrated on eating.

Sam watched the young girl dive into her meal with a hunger that was substantial and folded his arms across his chest. Miss Parker would need to hear what he'd just discovered before a decision as to what to do with her could be reached. But HIS inclination was to make sure she wasn't rewarded for helping find Sydney by being sent back into an intolerable situation — whether it be into homelessness or into an abusive household. This girl was a survivor — she deserved better.

If he could, he'd make sure she GOT better.

Dr. Ziegler frowned. It had been hours since his call to Captain Lewis, and he had yet to receive word that the information he needed — the information that had been stolen from him — was on its way back into his possession. The afternoon was aging, and he was anxious to start work once more. Several more batches of the drugs involved would need to be concocted, and then he'd need Lewis to acquire two more test subjects on whom to test the final nuances of drug and psychological treatment.

As it was, he had some leftover paperwork from the convention to finish, and he'd been poking his way through the reports and assessment sheets for the better part of the day while waiting his call. He sighed heavily and leaned his chin into his hand and tried vainly to focus on the questions he needed to write responses to. He should NEVER have agreed to be a reviewer for the next journal…

The telephone rang. Instantly alert, he reached for it before the second ring. "Yah, Ziegler here."

"Doctor Ziegler," an unfamiliar voice sounded in his ear. "This is Cody Tyler in Administration. I was wondering if you could come up to my office, please?"

"Mr. Tyler, I was just up in administration yesterday, speaking to the Chairman herself. So unless this is urgent…" the German's accent thickened in his disappointment.

"As a matter of fact, it IS rather urgent," Tyler insisted, casting his eyes on the plastic container with the collection of vials and notebooks that had been retrieved from the private safe in the abandoned lab office. "Can you be up here in fifteen minutes, please?" he asked politely, his eyes looking up into those of the sweeper who have brought the container. He hung up the phone. "I want you to remain here — I'll probably need your services here in a bit."

"Yes, sir." Fred nodded and moved to find a place against the wall to wait patiently.

When Xing-Li announced Ziegler's arrival, the good doctor just barged right on through into the inner office and tossed his coat and briefcase on a chair.

"Going somewhere, Doctor?" Tyler inquired in a cool voice, a glance at Fred directing the sweeper to move and stand directly behind the psychiatrist.

"I'm not getting much accomplished here today," Ziegler brushed off the question and stalked up to stand in front of the desk. "I thought I might have more luck taking some of my work home with me."

Tyler's eyes dropped to the container on his desk, and the glanced up in time to catch the change in expression in Ziegler's gaze to one of astonishment and then alarm when the good doctor followed Tyler's glance. "I see you're familiar with this," Tyler put his hand on the edge of the container, rattling the vials together gently in a tinkle of glass.

Ziegler's expression had quickly grown stony and cold. The German drew himself up and remained silent.

"I'm not surprised you have nothing to say," Tyler continued as if having an exchange with the psychiatrist wasn't what he'd had on his mind in the first place. "When your project was discontinued, you were directed to give ALL your research information and all materials to the sweepers. Imagine our surprise when our cameras caught you in the act of checking your private safe to see if this little stash was still safe…"

"But the cameras weren't…" Ziegler exploded in frustration and then caught himself before he could go further.

"But they were," Tyler smiled coldly and flipped a still photo of Ziegler opening the safe onto the desk where the scientist could see it. "Did you honestly think that after warning all of you NOT to talk to your military liaisons, should you be contacted directly, and after having one of your fellow scientists attacked, that we would leave entire sublevels worth of labs without any security whatsoever?"

"This is nothing," Ziegler finally spouted in righteous indignation. "I have a right to protect my research…"

"Research owned by the Centre, Doctor — not you personally. What were you intending to do with this, by the way?"

Ziegler's eyes met Tyler's. "I don't think I have to answer that question."

"As you choose," Tyler shrugged. "Fred, Dr. Ziegler's briefcase is confiscated as of now — and I want his keys, key cards and all other Centre-owned property removed from his person."

"What are you doing, Herr Direktor? Firing me?" Ziegler bristled arrogantly.

"Nothing quite that innocuous," Tyler replied. "You will be escorted to a holding area pending the culmination of an FBI investigation, after which you will be handed over into their custody to face whatever they might throw at you — and you ARE fired, Doctor. No doubt there will be a search of your home, courtesy of the FBI, at which time any Centre-owned property not pertinent to the case at hand will be returned to us."

"You can't do this to me!" Ziegler landed on Tyler's desk with both hands folded into fists. Fred started forward, only to be restrained by a glance from Tyler.

"I not only CAN do this, but I AM," Tyler answered in a deceptively calm voice. "We will not put up with anything that remotely resembles the kind of work this corporation used to do in days past."

"Folly!" Ziegler straightened and shook his head. "Self-righteous weakness. The Centre has always been about power and the ways such power could be put to use."

"It still is about power," Tyler signaled to Fred to take the psychiatrist into his custody. "We just choose to exercise that power in different directions than you're used to. You had your chance to be a part of something new and better."

Ziegler's face grew disgusted. "Spare me the gushing, Herr Direktor."

"Get him out of my office," Tyler spat finally. "Keep him somewhere very secure and very comfortable until we hear from the FBI."

"Yes, sir." Fred opened the door and let in his partner, who took Ziegler by the arm while Fred took charge of the briefcase.

Xing-Li popped her head around the corner of the open door. "Are you ready for your next appointment, sir?"

Tyler waved her into his office. "Give me a minute," he breathed, pushing the plastic container on his desk as far away from him as he could. He looked up into her pretty face and remembered how he'd managed to cajole several honest smiles and a couple of shy chuckles from her over their shared banana split the evening before. "It takes me a while to get over being in the presence of so much bad will."

"Shall I remove this for you?" she pointed to the plastic container.

"Yeah," he replied, pushing it just a little bit closer to her. "Call Security and have them put it somewhere VERY secure. I have a feeling our friends at the Pentagon will be very interested in seeing it."

She took the container and then cast an appraising eye at her boss. "Ready now?"

Tyler sighed. "Anybody ever tell you that you're a slave driver?"

"No," she replied with a shy smile, "but the people sitting in my office have been telling me about how busy they are…"

Tyler put his hands to his eyes and rubbed tiredly. It had been a LONG day, carrying his own load and Miss Parker's as well again. "Very well, send in the next appointment."

"Hey, Syd, there's someone here who'd like to see you," Sam announced, taking some small comfort from the return of a little color to the aging psychiatrist's face. He turned and pushed Crystal ahead of him into the room and then shut the door behind her so that she could have a little privacy with the man she'd literally saved.

Sydney watched with silent interest as the girl glanced back over her shoulder as if surprised or disconcerted at the loss of Sam's presence at her elbow and then looked all around the room with one bright, dark eye. Finally she stepped far enough into the room that he could see that while her face was still bruised and swollen, the rest of her features were delicate and finely chiseled. When she healed, the girl would be genuinely pretty.

Crystal could feel the man's eyes on her every movement, and finally she screwed up her courage and just walked up to the side of the bed and looked down at him. He certainly looked much better — his face had a touch of color in it, and his eyes were clear. "So," she said finally. "They tell me you're a shrink."

"And you figured out where to go for help after all," Sydney added with a nod.

"You're Kevin's uncle." It wasn't a question.

"And you're the girl who has been calling him all sorts of names." That wasn't a question either.

Crystal despised the sense of awkwardness, and she put a hand on one hip. "Listen, they told me that I needed to talk to you before they'd think about letting me go. So…"

"Is that such a bad thing?" Sydney asked gently. "At least it gives me the chance to say thank you — as inadequate as that may be under the circumstances." He would have reached up to her, but wasn't sure how the gesture would be interpreted and so kept his hand still on top of the blankets. "What did the doctor say about your face?"

"That I was lucky that my cheek wasn't busted," she answered almost before she had a chance to think about it and then blushed. "But I'll be OK after a while – he said the swelling will go down in a couple of days."

"Good." Sydney's face reflected a genuinely contented look at her news.

"What about you? What's the damages on your end?" she asked curiously.

"A couple of cracked ribs, the incision from a recent surgery torn open again, and I have a helluva headache from the whiskey, but I'll live," he reported quietly. "Thanks in part to you…"

"What was a fancy shrink like you doing slumming in the worst part of town in the middle of the night all shit-faced anyway?" The dark eye pinned his chestnut gaze and wouldn't let it go.

Sydney shifted on the bed and felt the stab of pain from the bandaged ribs prevent him from moving much more than he did. "I acted before I thought – it was stupid."

"No duh. I thought shrinks were supposed to be smart people."

"Even smart people make mistakes," he told her in a humble tone. "Those that think they don't ever make mistakes are making the biggest one of all."

"So… Sydney…" Crystal could feel herself liking this man all the more, now that he was sober and not fighting her anymore. And, like the others here at this Centre place, he was treating her with respect and politeness – a pleasant change from her life over the last few months with Scooter. It made her feel nervous to be so comfortable around a virtual stranger old enough to be her grandfather. "Now that we've talked, can you tell your daughter to let me go?"

"I seriously doubt she's holding you prisoner," he replied with the beginnings of a smile. "Besides, where would you go – back to that warehouse that you have to run away from every morning before the workers there beat you for tresspassing?"

She lifted her chin proudly. "At least there I'm my own boss – nobody tells me where I can go or can't, what I can do or can't…"

"Until you fall in with another one like Scooter, who just beats you instead," Sydney remarked without any rancor or obvious intent to be hurtful. "What's your name?" When she looked at him sharply, he shrugged. "You know my name, it would be only fair for me to know yours…"

"Crystal," she answered, then looked down. "That's the name I want people to call me."

"Then that's the name that I shall call you," Sydney told her. He put out a hand, palm upwards. "I honestly don't know what Parker has in store for you, Crystal – but I give you my word on this: if you ever need my help, you have but to ask for it."

"You don't need to do that…" she shook her head as if afraid of the offer.

"Yes, I do. You went out of your way and risked your own safety on my behalf — that isn't something I can ignore or pretend wasn't worth something. This is the least I can do for you." Sydney held his hand still, palm still up and open. He had the sudden impression of being very close to a wary and feral creature that hadn't quite decided whether or not to trust him.

Very cautiously Crystal put her hand in that of the older man she had helped. "OK, thanks… I guess…" she said with deceptive carelessness, touched to the heart. Such things didn't happen to her anymore — especially from authority figures.

There was a knock on the door and Sam poked his head into the room. "Hey, Syd, Miss Parker wanted me to bring the kid up to her office when she was done here. You let me know when you're through, OK?"

"Are we done?" Crystal asked her new friend, pulling her hand back quickly in embarrassment before she could be tempted to hang on and never let go.

"For now," Sydney smiled. "Take good care of her, Sam. I don't want anything bad to happen to her."

"No problem, Sydney," Sam agreed easily. "I'll be glad to."

Gillespie sighed as he stepped into the elevator at NSA headquarters with his temporary NSA partner. It was nearly suppertime, and the haul that they had found at Phil Baldwin's fishing cabin at White Cloud Lake would take days to sort through. They had stopped at the nearest post office and commandeered a plastic bin into which they'd put everything they had collected for easy handling once they got back to DC. They had then watched carefully as the bin had been loaded into the storage compartment of the helicopter that had brought them back to the rooftop of the building.

Personally, Gillespie had held out the most recent ledger book of the group's activities — and found it fascinating reading during the flight home. Phil Baldwin had been a most exacting bookkeeper, taking precise and damning notes regarding how much money from which lobbyist had been summarily forwarded into the group's checking account on the one hand, and how much of that money had then found its way into the Centre coffers for which project on the other. What was more, the Centre wasn't the only research and development firm with which the group had had contact — two others had done similar work to a much lesser degree.

Sylvie Gotham, on the other hand, had been poring through an appointment calendar for the same period of time. The two had sat elbow to elbow and coordinated dates and times of meetings with ledger entries in a way that clearly implicated three Senators in the conspiracy: Canfield, Jackson and Burns. Entries in the ledger of cash withdrawals from the account could be enhanced by appointment dates in the calendar, along with detailed notes pertaining to which judge or other official had received that largess, and for what. Several officers with Pentagon security had accepted bribes from time to time to keep their eyes and mouths shut, as well as agents with the Treasury and Justice departments. Once all the warrants were made out and served, there would be nearly thirty people indicted for one reason or another between members of the military and civilians.

Sylvie signaled the clerk who had taken charge of the wheeled bins to follow her from the elevator toward her office. She pushed through the doors and stopped in surprise. Whelan was seated at the planning table along with another gentleman, and Chuck looked up immediately. "Ah! You're back. Do we have it?"

"Everything you would want to know about a conspiracy to develop banned weapons and deploy them is right there," Gillespie explained to his own boss, Gerald Berghoff, as he pointed to the bins. "We have names, dates, deposit and payment amounts, what it was spent on, who it was sold to afterwards — everything."

"Enough to satisfy a grand jury?" Berghoff asked quietly.

"Enough to satisfy even the most skeptical among us," Sylvie added. "And add to this the transcripts from the wire taps, and I doubt that any of them will see daylight for a while."

"Call Jim over at the Justice Department," Whelan said in a satisfied tone. "Give him a list of names for the warrants."

"I'll call the JAG office and let them know we have corroborating evidence for the charges against the military participants," Berghoff nodded.

"Call Senator Ashland too," Whelan suggested. "She deserves to know where we stand so that she can set up official ethics committee investigations against those three Senators as well. It's time she knows we have 'em."

"And you two can see what else you can find in Phil's office while we sort through this mess," Chuck added, then smirked as he saw his agent slump. "Cheer up, Sylvie — it's almost over."

"How much you want to bet that we don't get supper — and we end up working some serious overtime tonight?" she grumbled to her FBI partner as they walked from the room.

"Sounds about right," Gillespie yawned. "But look on the bright side…"

"There's a bright side?" Sylvie sounded skeptical.

"We'll get to sleep in tomorrow," he finished.

"If we're VERY lucky and aren't still HERE tomorrow, that is…" she retorted.

Gillespie scratched his head. "Yeah… There is that…"

"Hello?"

"Hi, Jarod — it's me."

"Missy." Jarod relaxed back against the wall of the hallway and listened as his daughter splashed happily in the tub. "How's Sydney?"

"Cracked ribs, he tore his incision, and he's hung over like crazy," she reported. "He was lucky he didn't get rolled any worse than that."

"What about his car? Did you find it eventually?" he was curious.

"In North Carolina," she answered. "I'm having a sweeper from the Charlotte office drive it back tomorrow. By then, Syd should be able to drive himself home again. The little bastard they arrested driving it is the same bastard that beat him up — and you can bet I'm going to press charges."

"I'm just glad that Sydney wasn't hurt any worse than he was," Jarod breathed a deep sigh of relief. "What about you? Are you OK?" he asked quietly.

"I am now," she replied, leaning her head into her hand at the dining table of her new home. "At least now I can spend the evening cleaning without worrying about somebody being missing or hurt."

"Cleaning?" Jarod frowned. "Where are you?"

"At the town house," she replied. "Davy and I have started to move in. We picked up most of our clothes and day to day necessities when I got home from work tonight, and we'll sleep here from now on. I hired a domestic team to finish the job tomorrow and Friday while we're out — and I'm hoping that we can move the rest of the important stuff from the summer house this weekend before you and Sprite get here."

"How about the mess at the Centre? How's that shaping up?"

"We haven't heard a word all day from the military man Tyler contacted — but we DID manage to catch us one die-hard left-over from the Centre's 'good ole days'. He was going to go ahead with his research project despite what he'd been told."

"What are you going to do with him?"

"Turn him over to the FBI when the time comes," she answered very matter-of-factly. "Tyler sent sweepers to the guy's house to make sure there wasn't anything there that belonged to us — under Blue Cove PD supervision," she added before Jarod could voice an objection.

"You're really adhering to the letter of the law, aren't you? He asked proudly.

"I'm trying," she sighed. "So what about you? How are things shaping up on your end?"

"Well, the court appointment is tomorrow morning," he listed, "and after that, I have to keep one last therapy appointment at the office before the only thing left to do is pack and call you to send a Centre jet for us. Oh…" he remembered. "Mom has decided to come back to Delaware with us to visit for a little bit."

"Your mother's coming with you?" Miss Parker was surprised. "I thought she never wanted…"

"She's decided she wants to meet Sydney," he told her. "And I can't think of a good reason to say no."

"Sydney's not in the best of shape to be grilled by an inquisition, Jarod," she warned him. "He's suffering flashbacks and the occasional anxiety attack from all the old memories of the Nazis and Dachau that have broken free. I don't want him to feel pressured to defend himself."

"I'll talk to her, Missy, I promise."

"How's Sprite?"

Jarod peeked around the corner of the bathroom and chuckled at the sight of Ginger with soap bubbles covering most of her body and head. "Very wet and currently covered with bubble bath bubbles," he replied. "She's getting better, Missy. I'm hoping the judge will see just how much from the photographs that were taken when she was removed from that… that… woman's care."

"I gave her a nice bedroom here, Jarod — my old room, actually. It looks out over the front of the house and has a canopy bed and the whole nine yards."

Jarod could almost feel how she was trying to reach out and establish a connection with her new daughter by giving her the bedroom she had had as a child. "I'm sure she'll like it," he reassured her. "I think she's even looking forward to seeing you again. I KNOW she's looking forward to seeing Davy."

"It will be SO good to have you home again," Miss Parker sighed. Maybe he would know what to do. "But right now, I need your advice, Jarod. I have this little problem that I'm not entirely sure how to deal with."

"What kind of problem?" He moved into his living room and sprawled comfortably on the couch.

"We found Sydney because this street kid figured out who he was and came looking for Kevin to get help for him," she explained. "We brought her in with him because she'd been beaten up a bit too — and we cleaned her up and fed her. Now we find out that she's underage and a runaway from an abusive home situation. Sydney is quite insistent that we do right by her, but I'm at a loss as to what to do with her. We can't just turn her loose — she's homeless and deserves a chance to make something of herself. We can't ship her home…"

"Because that would put her back in a worse place than making her homeless would," Jarod finished for her. "How much underage is she?"

"Maybe six, eight months."

"Where's she from?"

"Vermont."

"Well," Jarod mused aloud, "if nobody in authority knows where she is, then it's likely that wherever she goes, it will continue to stay under the official radar for the time being. Is there anybody there who might be willing to take her under their wing, as it were…"

"Sam's kinda taken a shine to her," Miss Parker smiled in remembrance. Her Security Chief had been adamant about NOT sending her back to her parents in Vermont, and had even suggested that they put her up in the Centre itself for the night in one of the old cells — unlocked, of course. As a compromise, a cleaner team had been sent to the apartment building where Xing-Li and Lauren Mitchells were staying to clean out one of the other empty units for temporary housing for the homeless girl. "Between him and Syd, Jarod, I swear…"

"What does the girl say?" he asked.

"That one's a tough little nut," she granted. "I'm sure she'd like nothing better than to convince us she could do all on her own. As it is, it took a bit of convincing on my part and Sam's that we really were putting her up in a decently clean and warm and dry and safe place for the night without any strings attached. I think Sam and Mei-Chiang were taking her out to dinner on the company card before dropping her off at the apartment for the night. I'm just hoping she's still there in the morning — Sydney seems quite taken with her as well. I wouldn't want to have to tell him she vanished in the night."

"Why don't you see if there are any jobs there at the Centre that she'd be willing to do in exchange for room and board for the time being. Maybe some quiet inquiries into how far in her schooling she got in Vermont before leaving wouldn't be a bad idea either. After she's eighteen, she'll be free to surface officially whenever she wants."

"Lemme think about it," Miss Parker replied. "That's a thought though — thanks."

"How's Davy's new class at school?"

"He likes the teacher so far…"

"That's good news…"

"Are we going to be putting Ginger in school here when she gets here?"

Jarod shook his head. "Until she's communicating in a more normal manner, Missy, it would be wasted time and energy for the teacher. She's better, but she's a long way from well." He smiled. "We'll discuss that part of it when we get there — and you can see how she's improved."

"Tell your mother I'm looking forward to seeing her again. And I'll warn Syd a little, so she doesn't catch him entirely unawares."

"Good thinking." He fell quiet. "I miss you," he said softly and gently. "It's time for me to come home."

"I know," she replied as softly. "I miss you too." She paused. "Do you think we might actually be able to start living a normal life once you get back?"

Jarod chuckled softly and the chuckle grew. "With the Centre, ANYTHING'S possible, Parker."

She broke into soft laughter. "I love you, Jarod, and I'll see you in just a few days."

"You betcha," he replied brightly. "And I love you too. Say goodnight to Davy for me."

"I will," she agreed, "if you say goodnight to Sprite for me. Give her my love."

"I will," he promised. "Goodnight, Missy."

"Goodnight, Jarod."

Feedback, please:


	18. Decisions Made

Resolutions – 18

Decisions Made

by MMB

Crystal rolled over and then sat up quickly. She was too comfortable, too warm – and her good eye peered out into the darkness trying to discern where she was. It took a long moment of complete confusion for her to remember that she was in a small, furnished apartment, courtesy of the Centre and Sydney and Sam's insistence on her having a warm and safe place to sleep that night. The moment she realized where she was, she lay back down into the comfortable mattress and covers to wonder at the abrupt turn her life had taken this time.

She'd heard of Sydney's part in the decision about her fate from Miss Parker after she'd left the older man resting quietly in his hospital bed. The intimidating woman had listened to Sam quietly and briefly relating what he'd been able to discover about her and then argue firmly for not turning her over to the authorities. Sydney, Miss Parker then related, had insisted that the Centre take some kind of steps to make sure that she was amply repaid for her Good Samaritan efforts on his behalf, something to which Sam had agreed wholeheartedly. There had been mention of her taking up temporary residence in one of the underground rooms – evidently they had housed people on a semi-permanent basis below ground at one time – but then Miss Parker had just picked up the phone and ordered some of her people to clean up this apartment for her.

Crystal turned onto her side and curled into a fetal ball. This was all too good to be true – these people were being too kind and too generous. These were the same people, she'd learned from Sam, who employed the dock workers who had pursued her so relentlessly when she made the mistake of trying to get into her warehouse refuge too early or left it too late. And she could tell from the attitude of the Parker woman that she was used to being around and wielding power – lots of it – on a regular basis. Sam, while certainly acting independently and standing up for his principles, was very deferential to her – even to the point of letting his boss tell him to take her out to dinner that night at the company's expense. Then again, seeing such a big man then turn around and cater openly and lovingly to his tiny Chinese fiancée had brought a shy smile to her lips once or twice during the evening.

But what would happen to her today, she asked herself fearfully. Surely they wouldn't let her stay in this apartment more than just the one night – nor would they feed her much more either. They'd found her a clean pair of blue jeans and tee shirt from somewhere, along with undergarments that fit, so that she felt properly dressed again and had had something at least clean and decent to wear to the restaurant. They'd even given her the surgical scrubs she'd been wearing to use later as pajamas. But it was already more than she could reasonably expect from anybody, no matter WHAT she'd done — and she hadn't done that much.

There had to be a limit to everybody's generosity – and surely she was getting close to the limits of theirs. The only question now was whether she wanted to stick around long enough to know the limit when it arrived and feel the withdrawal of approval and assistance. After all, she was just a smart-assed kid who'd done something nice once for someone they cared about. It wasn't as if they actually LIKED her…

A tear slipped out despite the heavy discipline that had prevented hundreds if not thousands just like it since she'd left home in Vermont. What she wouldn't give to be around these people more – people who treated each other AND her with respect and courtesy. She wouldn't have to behave like a porcupine all the time with them if she were going to stay – and dropping that deliberate rudeness would be a real relief – but then that wasn't going to happen, she chided herself brutally. These people wouldn't want her around for that much longer. Gratitude had its limits.

No doubt the moment she dreaded would come in the morning sometime – perhaps after they had taken her to see Sydney once more. She found herself genuinely hoping that she'd have the opportunity to say goodbye to her fellow victim. He was a good and kind man – she could still feel his hand holding hers and now wished she'd had the guts to keep hanging on longer than she had. She should never have teased Kevin about his uncle, she now realized – Kevin hadn't lied when he'd told her the man was warm and compassionate. Somehow she doubted that he would ever have thought of half of the things that she'd accused him of to Kevin – and the thought of what she'd imagined him to be as compared to the reality made her ashamed.

Heck, she should never have teased Kevin half as cruelly as she had either, she knew this now more than ever. If Kevin was anything like his uncle – and it certainly seemed as if he was picking up a lot of attitudes from the older man – he would have been a GOOD friend, the kind of friend she'd always wanted. But no, she'd had to play smart-ass, tough cookie, hard as nails that nothing ever hurt or bothered – lashing out first before others could lash out at her effectively. It had been a defense that had worked well for her, until now. Now it had ruined everything.

Crystal pulled the warm blankets up around her shoulders and tucked them in snugly around herself and closed her eyes tightly. She was warm, she was dry, she was better-fed now than she'd been in weeks. Two hearty meals in one day was more than she'd eaten in a very long time. She would have to remember that there WAS a world in which this civility and kindness towards others was the norm – and that this was the kind of world she wanted to live in some fine day.

Someday she'd find a place for herself – a place where she belonged and people to whom she mattered. Until then, her memories of the last two days would sustain her.

She hoped. Much would depend on how difficult the letdown would be.

Deb gave a deep sigh and roused slightly, and then settled back into Kevin's embrace contentedly. He had wrapped himself at her back like a warm blanket, surrounding her with his arms and holding her tightly into him, and was snoring very softly into her ear. She shifted again and his arms tightened around her possessively, as if making sure that she didn't leave his keeping.

She smiled very quietly to herself – waking up like this was like nothing she had ever expected. She knew that while Grandpa would probably be very unhappy about the development that had taken place during his absence and the living arrangement changes that would necessarily follow, she had no intention of ever going back to sleeping alone again. Her Dad would probably growl and spit his objections as well – but this was HER life, and she intended to spend it at Kevin's side.

She'd had a chance to think through some of her former long-range plans in the shower before that young girl had knocked on the door and thrown the day into complete chaos. Her plans for college would now depend on several factors. It would need to wait until her father was released from the hospital, until her Grandpa was ready to release her from daily therapy sessions for her assault, AND until Kevin would be ready to fend for himself in this wide, new world that had just opened to him. There was just so MUCH that he needed to learn – and the idea that she could be a part of the team introducing him to his new life was intoxicating.

One thing was for certain: she had no intention of leaving his side for any reason. She loved him completely – loved his naïveté and his curiosity about the world, loved the way he pampered her and supported her, and loved the way he loved her so wholeheartedly and had made her the most important thing in his universe. She'd never been quite so loved and catered to since her very first days with her father after the divorce and custody battle. Kevin was very rapidly becoming the very center of HER world now too. When she thought of plans now, those plans were phrased in terms of "us" not "me."

They still hadn't had their discussion where she laid out some of those plans for his input. Crystal's knock had torn them out of the house and down to a dingy alleyway behind a diner, where they'd waited for the Centre ambulance and Sam's assurance that he'd keep them informed as to her Grandpa's condition before they finally let Joe drive them home. Then it had been time for her to eat lunch quickly and get ready to go to work at the library, leaving Kevin behind to sort through those endless papers for another long afternoon. Sam had called while she was out, recommending that they come to visit Sydney after supper, which they had done. Then, after Kevin had finished his lesson out in the back yard with Ikeda, they had retired early to rest up from a long day of excitement and relief. She had walked back across the hall after changing into her pajamas and climbed into bed with him, and he had pulled her close and kissed her gently before they both had very quickly fallen asleep.

She shifted again and felt him give a big sigh behind her and pull her in even closer to him. "Go back to sleep," he mumbled in a low, soft voice. "It's too early to get up."

"I'm not getting up yet," she whispered back, rolling in his arms so that she was facing him. She kissed his nose. "Good morning."

One sleepy, blue eye opened part way, and then he stretched out to kiss her lips gently. "Good morning," he replied in a slightly more alert tone. "Another nightmare?"

She shook her head. Once more, she'd broken his sleep in the wee hours with her shriek and sitting bolt upright in fear. Once more his soft voice and gentle caresses had broken through the wall of terror that had surrounded her until she had huddled against him in relief and in desperate need of his comforting and finally – eventually – fallen asleep again. "No," she replied. "I just woke up." She moved her hand to hold him back, her hand smoothing over warm skin. "I was thinking…"

"About what?" the other blue eye opened now and gazed at her softly.

"About what's going to happen with us," she replied, settling her head on his shoulder and looking into his face earnestly. "About how I'm not going to go away to college until you're ready to come with me."

"Me go with you?" Kevin breathed. "You'll wait for me?"

"I'm not leaving you," she answered, her hand smoothing up and down his back.

"What about marriage?"

"What about it?"

"Will we get married then?"

She stretched up to kiss him. "I think Grandpa and Daddy would prefer that we get married if we're going to be living together this way."

"But, do you want to?" he persisted. "You said before that marriage was a big decision that couldn't be made so quickly."

"I know," she nodded. "But I've had a chance to think about it now, and I think, maybe, yeah."

"Yeah?" Kevin was fully awake now. "You're sure?"

She smiled up at him. "Mmm-hmmm," she nodded. "I've been waiting a long time for someone like you to come into my life."

He stretched down and caught her lips with his in a deep and passionate kiss. "I do love you," he breathed at her when they finally separated. "But what are we going to do when Sydney comes back? He's not going to be very happy about…"

"We'll talk to him," she reassured him, "and we'll tell him what we plan."

Somehow Kevin wasn't so sure Sydney would be placated quite as easily as Deb wanted to believe, but he kept his reservations to himself. He had already resigned himself to facing a long and probably very uncomfortable session with his mentor about the entire situation once the psychiatrist was feeling better. Besides, Sydney was not the only one who stood to be made angry by the change in his relationship with Deb — one other in particular stood out in his mind.

"What if your Dad says no?"

"I'm twenty-one years old, Kevin. My Dad can tell me what he thinks, but he can't tell me what to do anymore. Just like Sydney can tell you what he thinks, but he can't tell you what you do either." Her hand smoothed up his back in broader strokes. "At the worst, we'd have to move out of Grandpa's and find a place of our own."

Kevin tipped his head so that he could see her face more clearly. "We could do that?"

"We'd both have to be making money to keep the rent and utilities paid, but…" She smiled. "Lots of people our age are already married."

"What do we have to do to get married then?" he asked curiously.

"I'm sure Grandpa will tell us all we need to know when he gets home," Deb said, moving closer to him and shifting her body against his. "Until then…"

Kevin could feel how her touch had changed, become more provocative. "Oh yeah?" he chuckled, deliberately setting aside all his questions and worries to focus on the moment — and on Deb.

"Yeah," she breathed back and started to nibble.

"I think I can handle that…" he said, bending his head to capture her lips again and then rolled her into her pillow. Deb sighed in contentment as she felt his caress slip beneath the silken pajama blouse in search of warm skin and anything else he could find.

She would never tire of Kevin's touch…

"I told you that we'd still be here in the morning," Sylvie grumbled at Gillespie and then yawned widely.

"Have you two finished cataloging the evidence from the office?" Chuck Whelan breezed into the NSA office fresh from his morning shower, the crispness of his dress belied by the exhaustion in his eyes.

"Almost," Sylvie replied in a seriously grumpy voice. The only reason she wasn't snapping at her boss at the moment was that Chuck had been at work as long as she had – only leaving a half hour earlier to shower and change for a new day down in the locker room. "Are all the warrants sworn out yet?"

"I haven't heard from A. D. Berghoff yet," Chuck answered while reaching for a Styrofoam cup with one hand and the half-empty coffeepot with the other. "I'm assuming, however, that we should have them by noon."

"Good," Gillespie retorted. "The news of the military arrests is going to be spreading around the Beltway pretty soon, and we don't want any of these bozos to get the idea that they can run very far. I'm too tired to play fetch anymore today."

"You two won't have to be playing fetch," Chuck responded with a chuckle. "Finish what you're doing and then knock off – report back in twelve hours to meet with the federal prosecutor."

Sylvie finished typing her report into the little laptop, saved the document, and then paused at the very brink of closing down the system. "Is there anything else we need to add to that one?" she asked Gillespie.

"Let's beat it," was the tired response, followed by another yawn.

"Cut that out!" Chuck grumbled. "I'm as tired as you two are, and I DON'T get to go home yet."

"That's why they pay you the big bucks, boss," Sylvie quipped as the computer shut itself off and she closed the lid. She looked at Gillespie. "How about you buy a girl some breakfast downstairs, and THEN we can head home."

Gillespie slowly began to smile. He like this NSA agent – she was smart and she was sharp and she was more than capable of keeping up with him both professionally and humor-wise. "That sounds like an excellent idea," he answered, holding out an elbow to receive her hand after she had retrieved her purse from her desk drawer.

Chuck watched Sylvie's shapely form contentedly follow that of the seasoned FBI agent toward the elevators, vaguely aware that his chances to get to know the pretty agent in his chain of command had just taken a serious hit. He sighed and headed for the glass door of his internal office. Those were the breaks of command, he told himself brusquely.

Once this mess was concluded, he'd have to see if that blonde in Treasury was still interested in martial arts flicks.

The hot shower to begin the day had been heaven, especially with the idea that there was nobody pushing at her to get out or waiting for her. Crystal dried herself carefully with the thick, terry towel, braided her wet hair into a single rope to hang down her back and then donned her clean daytime clothing, folding the scrubs neatly to take with her when she left. She then made the bed — something she hadn't done for a very long time — and then sat on the edge of it, feeling sorry for herself. She looked around the room in the light of the new morning and decided that it would be very comfortable to live in a place like this.

The décor of the apartment had a decidedly oriental bent to it — screens of calligraphy and brush paintings adorned the walls and the furniture was low and quite functional. She was surprised to find a small carton of fresh milk in the fridge, which she drank straight down, and a loaf of bread. She gobbled two slices before she was done, and then carefully folded the thin plastic so that the remaining slices wouldn't dry out in the fridge. Then she moved to the low futon couch in the living room, waiting for the knock on the door that told her that her respite from life was over. She smoothed her hand across the canvas upholstery lovingly — this was nothing fancy, but it was heaven compared to what she'd had for months now. What she wouldn't give…

No, she schooled herself sternly. She couldn't think that way, it would only tear her apart. She had no part in this kind of life — and these people couldn't be expected to give her anything more than what they already had. She had had a two-day reprieve from the struggle to survive, she should be content with that.

The knock came far too soon, as far as she was concerned. She opened the door to find herself looking down into the round, smiling face of another very pretty Chinese lady. "Miss? Mr. Atlee called me this morning and asked me to escort you back to his office at the Centre — and Dr. Mitchell and I are ready to go in that direction. Do you have anything you need to do before…"

"No, I'm ready," Crystal replied, reaching behind her for the folded scrubs. "I'll need to return these…"

"No, no," the Chinese lady was shaking her head. "Leave them here for now — you'll need them later."

Crystal folded her brows into a frown. "I won't be coming back here — will I?"

Xing-Li shrugged. "I don't know, Miss. But I'm sure you'll be allowed to pick them up if you're being moved elsewhere." She gestured at the car waiting below, with Mitchell sitting at the wheel already. "At least we don't have to walk…"

Crystal picked up the key ring with the brass plate that held the Centre logo and carefully locked the door of her temporary refuge and put it in her pocket. She then followed Xing-Li down the stairs and obediently took a seat in the back seat of the comfortable and expensive little sedan. She listened half-heartedly as the Chinese lady and the woman at the wheel chatted familiarly during the short drive back to the complex of buildings and a construction site, looking out the window behind her with longing. Then the car pulled to a stop in a parking spot, and she was climbing out again to quietly follow the Chinese woman wherever it was that Mr. Atlee kept his office.

Xing-Li knocked and then pushed the door open. "Mr. Atlee, I have the young lady with me…"

"Thanks, Xing-Li. I appreciate this…" Sam smiled at his fiancée's former roommate and then gestured for Crystal to come into the office. "Sit down — I have a couple of things I need to do first…"

Crystal obeyed without a word, taking a seat in the comfortable chair across the desk from the huge man and folding her hands nervously in her lap. She deliberately found something interesting to look at in the worn carpeting while she steeled herself for the kind and compassionate brush-off that was sure to follow.

Sam cast a concerned eye at his guest — this complete lack of fire or bravado was not encouraging. Then it hit him. She was expecting to be given the boot. She'd had a meal and a warm bed, and that was to be her thanks for what she'd done for Sydney, and now she expected to be shown the door and given a rough shove into the cold world again. Not that he could blame her — from some of the small comments she'd made at dinner the evening before, it had been a long time since anybody had given this young woman a decent break. It had been so long since she'd been on her own that she'd started thinking of herself as street trash — and expected to be treated that way by everybody now.

He hurried through the rest of the evening's security reports, making sure that nothing had happened in the night that urgently needed immediate attention, then set his paperwork aside. "We have an appointment," he announced rising. "Come on."

"I wish you'd just tell me to get lost and let me go," she muttered finally as she rose as well. "Dragging it out isn't making it any easier, you know…"

"Miss Parker called me last night after I left you off, asking that I bring you to her office this morning," Sam explained. "I'm not sure what it is she has in store for you. Just hang in with me a little longer."

Crystal shrugged off Sam's attempt to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, and walked obediently at his side when he took her elbow in his hand instead. For some reason, the idea that she was a prisoner escorted from place to place made this more tolerable.

"Is she…" he asked Mei-Chiang, who merely nodded.

"She's expecting you," she replied and waved the pair on past her desk.

"There you are," Miss Parker looked up from her own paperwork and set it aside for the time being. "Sit down."

"Look, I appreciate all you've done for me, and I know that…"

"Hush." Miss Parker held up a cautionary finger. "Sit." She pointed, and then waited for Crystal to finally do as she'd been told before continuing. "I spent a lot of time thinking about you and your situation last night, and weighing the options we have. Part of what I had to consider was the fact that Sydney and Sam would have my hide if I just let you slip away out there again," she waved at her window and the view beyond.

"I can take care of myself," Crystal complained, insulted. "I've done fine so far…"

"You've been lucky so far," Miss Parker corrected. "And as for doing fine so far, take a look at your face."

"That's…"

"Part of the problem is your age. We can't just let you go out there again without trying to make some kind of provisions for you."

Crystal's one good eye snapped. "I don't need another mommy," she growled.

"I'm not saying that you do — but like I said, Sydney and Sam here would be very angry with me if I didn't make some kind of effort on your behalf. So, I have a proposition for you."

"You could just let me go," Crystal begged, "before I do something that will make you wish you'd let me go."

"That's not one of the options I had open to me. What I am doing, however, is offering you a job."

"WHAT?" Crystal stared. That was the absolute LAST thing she had expected.

"Nothing great or spectacular — you'd be delivering interdepartmental paperwork, maybe doing some filing between times or any other small odd job that a department head might need done that you can handle." Miss Parker could see that she had absolutely stymied the girl. "The little apartment you stayed in last night would be provided to you as part of your pay along with a food budget and a small stipend that will give you spending money for luxuries as time goes by. Technically, you would be in Centre custody — although we wouldn't have to make it official unless you insisted or wanted it that way."

"Why?" The question was soft and almost pleading.

"Because we could use a roaming Girl Friday Go-Fer type person around here," Miss Parker replied with the beginnings of a smile. "And because it would keep you safe from others that would treat you like that bastard did that beat up my father and stole his car, and give you a place of your own, more or less, until you're old enough to actually BE out on your own."

"But you don't know me…" This was too much. Things this good just didn't happen to her. This was a dream — when was she going to wake up?

"I know all I need to know — you didn't run when just about anybody else would have seen to their own skin and let my father lie in the gutter," Miss Parker said kindly. "You didn't have to help him then — and you didn't have to go for help for him the next day either. That says more about who you are than anything you can tell me in words." She smiled. Jarod's advice had been sound — why, if all this girl would do was run away again, send her back into a bad place when she could stay here, be safe, and maybe even contribute to the kind of Centre she wanted to create.

"You're serious." Crystal still couldn't wrap her mind around it. Far from being shown the door, she was being offered a job and a place to call her own — and safety among people who treated her like a human being.

"Absolutely," Miss Parker smiled up at Sam and saw that he very obviously and thoroughly approved of her solution to the problem. "All I need now is to know if that is agreeable to you."

The dark eye peered at Miss Parker intently and showed just the faintest glimmer of hope in its depths. "Would I see Sydney sometimes?"

Miss Parker smiled a little more widely. The tough little street kid had a soft spot in her heart after all — and for Sydney to boot. "When he's well enough to come back to work, I'm sure you'll see him from time to time — if he doesn't decide to visit you himself before then. I think he's found a soft spot in his heart for you, if you hadn't noticed. So… what do you say?"

"Nobody's done anything this nice for me for…" Crystal started and then looked up at the intimidating woman across the desk from her. "I'd like very much to try that job. I'm just afraid I'll be a disappointment. I haven't ever done anything like that before."

"That's OK," Miss Parker soothed. "I'll set you up with the head of the clerical department and have her train you over the next few weeks — so you'll know where your deliveries have to go, if nothing else." She opened a drawer and pulled out a slip of paper. "Before then, you'll take this to the bank in town. I'll call them and tell them to expect you and to cash the check. I want you to go buy yourself some decent clothing for work — nothing fancy, but no jeans or tees, OK? Use what's left to get yourself some food. You'll need to eat, and you'll have to fend for yourself on that score — no more dinners out on the Centre for a while."

Crystal stared down again. "Miss Parker, this is too much…"

"Very well — think of this part of it as a loan, then. You can work and pay us back that way for a while. When we agree that you've paid it off, your stipend will increase some to reflect what had been withheld," Miss Parker assured her, then turned to Sam. "Assign a sweeper to take Crystal where she needs to go this morning, and then drop her back at her apartment." She returned her attention to the stunned girl. "You can start tomorrow morning, after you've rested a little more. Tomorrow's Friday — you can get oriented a bit, take the weekend to settle in a bit more, then start to work in earnest on Monday."

Crystal stood and had to restrain herself from throwing herself into the woman's arms. "I… don't know what to say, Miss Parker. I'll try very hard not to let you down."

"I know you will," she said, then eyed Sam again. "Maybe a visit with Syd before he gets sprung wouldn't be such a bad thing before the sweeper takes over. What do you think?"

"I'd like that very much," Crystal answered for herself, the first of a cautious smile teasing at her lips.

"I haven't been here for a while," Becca Ashland remarked as she looked all around her at the Pentagon corridor. Her arms were full of the combined FBI/NSA report on the evidence gathered from the dead conspirator. Colonel Fox, who had met her in the lobby of the huge complex, didn't reply and ushered her into a small conference room where Admiral Samson, General Fisher from the Air Force and Admiral Weston from JAG filled out the military end of things. Chuck Whelan from NSA, FBI Assistant Director Berghoff and Clint Charleston from the Justice Department were the rest of the civilians at the table.

"Senator," General Fisher was the first one to his feet as she entered the room. "Thank you for coming. Quite an interesting little knot of trouble we've been unravelling."

Ashland appreciated the dry wit of the General — after all, it was HIS attaché that had been involved in the conspiracy. Including him in this meeting had been a diplomatic way of apologizing for not bringing him in earlier.

"It's good to see you again," she replied and then nodded to the other gentlemen at the table. She found the seat that had been prepared for her and took her seat. "As General Fisher said, we have quite a little knot here. I'm hoping we have enough evidence to provide grounds for federal warrants against some very powerful men."

"I can't say that we have an absolutely air-tight case," Chuck Whelan replied, "but both AD Berghoff and I agree that the information collected from Phil Baldwin, the dead conspirator from NSA ties this whole package together and makes it coherent."

At that point, AD Berghoff took over the narration. "We have a case where elected officials accepted money from lobbyists representing companies that stood to profit from destabilization of the Middle East and other hot spots around the globe via the application of the projects being commissioned from the Centre. We have calendar entries, photocopies of checks — complete with memo notes regarding the project being funded, bank statements and ledger entries detailing checks written to the Centre — complete with memo notes regarding the project being funded."

"We have recently recovered the missing documentation for the projects the Centre deliberately discontinued due to questionable authorization," Colonel Fox reported. "Lemme tell ya, the descriptions of the project goals and research procedures is enough to curl your hair, frankly — and if true, would be enough to indict key Centre personnel as well, if they weren't already dead. Current Centre administration had nothing to do with any of it and is to be commended for putting a stop to such madness." He patted the summary sheet and the folder of brief descriptions in front of him, then moved another folder on top of it. "We also have transcripts provided by the Centre detailing threats to Centre personnel made by key military members of the conspiracy, as well as the results of a DNA test run on a knife suspected in an assault on a Centre scientist, tying that particular military man directly to the assault. We have a transcript of another phone conversation where a high-ranking Pentagon official openly abets and encourages this attack."

"You say we have evidence linking companies and corporations that stood to profit from the chaos caused by these projects — what proof do we have linking the legislators with all of this, and can we prove that they knew of the kind of work being funded?" Senator Ashland wanted to know.

Fox nodded. "We have transcripts of General Curtis and Senator Burns discussion two of the more egregious projects here — Veracity and Black Hole. From the context, it would appear that not only did Senator Burns know about what the projects entailed, but was anxious that they be put back into development."

"We are still transcribing conversations between the principles of this conspiracy," AD Berghoff stated primly. "We will be paying special attention to any mention of the projects by name and/or any contextual reference that indicates direct knowledge of what they involved."

Whelan leaned forward. "We also have eye-witness testimony that Phil Baldwin deliberately instigated two frivolous investigations into innocent Centre personnel. We are working under the assumption that the intent was to pressure the current administration of the Centre into being more cooperative."

Now it was the Justice Department's turn to speak up. "Gentlemen, I can see we have enough to justify warrants against those whose 'blind eyes' and unquestioning cooperation furthered the agendas of this group. DO we have enough to issue warrants on the Senators themselves?"

"Phil Baldwin's appointment calendars and ledgers tie those men in rather tightly to the funding of these projects," Whelan answered with certainty. "The way I see it, the Senators were the brains and the instigators, the military men were the muscle and the errand boys getting the job done quietly."

"I have 'round the clock surveillance on all three of these men," Berghoff added. "If they meet, we'll have a transcript of what is being said. If THAT doesn't put the nails in their coffins…"

Ashland folded her hands on the table. "Well, boys, I have enough to at least justify the start of an ethics investigation into misuse of PAC funds and collusion. But how do you suggest we give these legislators who've done such a good job of staying in the shadows of this whole thing enough rope to hang themselves criminally?"

"Make public the news of the military arrests," Fox said firmly, drawing all eyes to him. "I'm betting dollars to donuts that they'll get together one last time to try to cut their ties to any of this. The discussion should be enough to hang them all."

General Fisher was nodding. "I like it. It would prove the connection between the military end of the conspiracy and the civilian end and really tie everything up in a nice bow for you Justice fellas," he ended, looking at Charleston.

"I'd like to see the peripheral civvies also get hauled in," Admiral Samson finally spoke up. "Seeing their circle of associates dwindle and be hauled in might make that meeting happen just all that much faster — and then we can end this whole damned thing except for the trials."

"We want them all," Whelan agreed, "from the top on down. Do we know the patsies in the military?"

"There will be a problem with that," Colonel Fox informed him. "For example, the duty sergeant at the Pentagon Archives was acting under the direct orders of his superior when he obstructed our ability to investigate — not out of any loyalty to the conspiracy agenda or even as the result of a bribe. That's how the military end of this became so powerful — the men involved were powerful and could just order things to happen, and have them happen. We nail the top dogs, we'll HAVE the military end of things sewn up."

"Then, Mr. Charleston, I suggest you get the warrants for everybody BUT the three legislators issued and served as soon as possible," Senator Ashland said, "while I go back to the Capitol and get the machinery there moving to start the investigation. We want these clowns' world to just suddenly start falling in."

"I'm already feeding NCIS all the information I have received from Admiral Samson," Admiral Weston added. "If there are any others involved that we haven't discovered to date, hopefully they can smoke them out eventually."

"I think we all know what we need to do," Admiral Samson said finally. "Let's keep lively and keep in touch openly now. The more we are seen as closing the net, the more we can drive the guilty ahead of us until we have them boxed."

Everyone at the table rose en masse and the meeting was adjourned. "That means you don't have to feel like a spy anymore, Becca," Samson smiled at his old friend.

Her eyes twinkled. "I was just starting to get into the swing of it," she complained in mock distress.

"We'll just have to find something else to tweak your fancy one of these days," Samson chuckled back. "You would have made a good military officer."

"As long as I make a good Senator, Greg," she retorted with a chuckle. "Wanna go get some coffee?"

He gestured for her to lead, and then followed her from the conference room.

"Jarod?" Margaret called from the front door.

"In here, Mom," he called back, Ginger pulled back between his legs so that he could button the back of her dress up properly.

Ginger began to squirm the moment she caught sight of her grandmother. "Gamma, me wear buffa-fies?"

"Yes, Sprite," Margaret chuckled at the look of frustration on Jarod's face as he tried to catch the last of the tiny fasteners with his daughter trying to escape. "But stand still so Daddy can finish buttoning you up first." She went to the vanity and picked up the hairbrush as Jarod finally let out a satisfied sigh and gave his little girl a nudge in the direction of her grandmother.

"You know, I have never felt this nervous before," he admitted, standing and heading over to stand behind the women and work at tying his tie. "I think I'm all thumbs today."

"Take a deep breath," Margaret advised, drawing the brush through the long, dark hair on one side of Ginger's head and beginning the braid. "Nothing's going to go wrong. This was meant to be, and you know it."

"I don't dare take anything for granted right now, Mom," he paused after his tie was arranged properly. "This is just about the time that things have this horrible tendency to go completely wrong…"

"That's just your nerves talking," she soothed. "You told me that this Mr. Rizzo from CPS was going to be speaking on your behalf, and there's the evidence from the last evaluation that Ethan did on her that shows marked improvement…"

"I know that." He slipped into his sports coat and watched as his mother finished braiding the long hair and finally attached the beloved 'buffa-fies' at the temples. "You look like a Princess, Sprite."

"Daddy," the little girl turned on the vanity seat and looked up at him seriously. "Me 'kared."

"Of what, baby?" Margaret asked kindly.

The dark little eyes grew thoughtful. "Maybe take me 'way — no more Daddy…"

"We won't let that happen, my little fairy child," Jarod bent and picked her up and held her close. "All you have to do is answer all the questions the judge asks you and tell the truth."

"Daddy be dere?"

"I think so," he told her truthfully. "But maybe the judge wants to talk to you alone. Do you think you can do that?"

"Him hurt?"

"No!" Margaret exclaimed softly. "Of course not. He just wants to make sure that you would be safe and happy with your Daddy before he makes it all official."

"Fishal?" The dark eyes were confused. "Wha' dat mean?"

"For real," Jarod told her with a kiss and then put her down. "It means that I'd be your real Daddy, and nobody could ever take you away again."

Ginger thought for a moment. "Den me talk an' answer questions."

"Good girl." Margaret smoothed a hand down the child's back as she turned to her son. "What time do you need to be there?"

"Nine," he answered.

"Gamma come too?" Ginger wanted to know then.

Margaret and Jarod exchanged glances. "Do you want me there?" she asked him softly.

"Me wan' Gamma come," Ginger urged, taking her father's hand and shaking it for emphasis.

"If you wouldn't mind," Jarod answered with a smile. "I think I'd like you there too."

She smoothed her hands down her blouse and trousers. "Do you think I'm suitably dressed?"

"You look fine, Mom," Jarod replied, bending to drop a kiss on his mother's cheek. "But I think that we'd better get a move on."

"C'mon, Gamma! Time to go!" Ginger exclaimed, grabbing first for her teddy bear and then at her grandmother's hand and beginning to drag at her.

"OK, OK," Margaret laughed. "Let's not forget your Daddy, shall we?"

"Daddy, hurry up!"

"I'm right behind you, Sprite," Jarod chuckled too. "You help Grandma get into the car while I finish something real quick."

He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and pressed a programmed number and then waited.

"Parker…"

"It's me," he said. "I'm on my way to the courthouse."

"Call me when you have news, Jarod," Miss Parker said, leaning back in her chair and wishing she could be there with him. "And tell Sprite that I'm thinking of her today."

"I will. I just wanted to hear your voice…" It was an inadequate excuse, he knew.

"It will be fine, Jarod." She smiled, remembering the case of stomach butterflies that she'd had on the morning of the day Davy had been pronounced hers at last. "I love you, and I love Sprite. Don't forget."

"I won't, Missy. I love you too."

"Call me after."

"I will."

"Jarod!" Margaret's voice came at him through the open front door. "Get a move on!"

"I gotta go."

"Love you."

"You too." He disconnected and walked quickly through the house and out the front door, feeling just a touch more reassured than he had a minute or two earlier. He settled in behind the steering wheel and looked at Ginger in the back seat, her butterflies sparkling in her hair like jewels. "You ready?"

"Me ready!" she chirped.

"Then let's go and make you my little girl for real," he said, starting the engine and backing carefully down the drive.

Sydney reached for his shirt with a wince as the movement irritated his cracked ribs. At least either Sam or Miss Parker had arranged for his clothing to be laundered and returned to him in a condition fit to wear again. That morning he had actually showered and shaved and was starting to once more feel human. What was more, he genuinely was looking forward to bunking back down on his daybed again — comparatively speaking, it was ten times more comfortable than the hospital bed he'd been in for roughly the last twenty-four hours.

"Are you up for a visitor, Syd?" Sam's voice came at him from behind the flowing white curtains that edged the room.

"I'm dressed and decent, if that means anything," Sydney replied.

Sam looked down into Crystal's face. "They're letting him go home today," he explained. "Go on in. I'm sure he'll be glad to see you. I've got to make the arrangements for a sweeper to take you into town anyway. I'll be back in a bit."

Crystal slipped past the Security Chief and through the curtains to where she could see Sydney sitting on the edge of the bed in clean clothes that looked a lot like what he'd been wearing before. "Hi," she said shyly, hanging back.

"Oh good, I was hoping I'd get a chance to see you again," he said and gestured at the chair that Miss Parker had had brought into the room when she had sat and waited for him to wake up. "Sit down."

She obeyed quietly, and looked up at him with a shining eye. "I wanted to thank you," she said with feeling. "Miss Parker told me what you said…"

"Did she come up with some kind of idea on how to help you?" Sydney wanted to know.

"She offered me a job," Crystal couldn't help the smile that burst across her face, "and she's letting me stay in this neat little apartment building. She even gave me money for clothes and food…"

Sydney nodded approvingly. "And you took the offer?"

"Yeah," she scuffed the toe of her sandal against he linoleum. "I'm still not sure I'm not dreaming, though. Things like this don't happen to folks like me."

"Sometimes they do," Sydney said gently.

"You brought me luck," she told him firmly. "You and Kevin — if I hadn't met Kevin, I wouldn't have known about you, and I couldn't have helped you, and then none of this would have happened to me."

"You remember now," he said, putting out a hand to her again, much as he had the previous day, "that if you need help, all you have to do is come to me."

She put her hand in his with a little more certainty of its reception. "I won't forget. I owe you so much, Sydney."

"No you don't," he shook his head. "This just makes us even."

Crystal cocked her head. "You know, I didn't have the guts to hug Miss Parker after she gave me all of this — but… do you think…"

Sydney smiled at her and opened his arms. Crystal moved slowly and cautiously and sat down on the bed next to him and let him pull her close. She leaned. "I'm sorry I told Kevin all those things about what I thought you were like," she apologized, not wanting that to sit unattended in her conscience anymore. "I was so jealous…"

"Kevin told me a little of what you'd told him," he said softly. "I know why you said those things — there's nothing to forgive, my dear."

"I know that you don't really know me or anything but… Will you…" She pushed away a little so she could look up at him — but not far enough to dislodge the arm around her shoulder. "Do you think you might come and visit me sometime? You're the closest thing I've had to a friend for a very long time."

"I'd be happy to," he replied, "as soon as I'm walking better. But I'll keep in touch through Sam and Miss Parker until then. If you need to contact me, you can leave a message with one of them, and they'll get it to me."

"You have your crutches back?" she asked, her eyes landing on the polished set next to the headboard of the bed.

"New ones," he said. "Seems my old ones ended up in the ocean."

"How are you feeling? Your ribs…"

"Sore as hell," he admitted. "And my head still feels like it's stuffed. I'm not going to be moving very fast for a while after I get home." He looked at her carefully. "How about you — how's your face today?"

"It hurts," she admitted. "I look like shit, don't I?"

"Don't worry about that," he soothed. "Bruises and swelling go away — and something tells me that you'll be a very pretty girl when you're all healed." He noticed that she hadn't moved away like she had the last time she'd visited him but was once more leaning — her prickly bravado had shredded a little and exposed a child's need for comfort that had been hiding beneath. "How long have you been alone?" he asked softly, tightening his arm just a little.

"Too long," she replied with a hitch in her voice. "Too long."

"You're far too young to live in that kind of despair," he stated and smoothed a hand down her arm. "Life changes for you now. I fully expect to see you blossom, young lady, or hear from you the reason why not."

"I'll try," she promised, her eyes closed and soaking up the gentle embrace from her fellow victim — someone who had now come to HER aid with just a word in the right ear. "I promise I'll try."

Judge Roy Barbera looked down into the documents that were on his bench and then up again at the pair that was sitting at the table. Dr. Jarod Russell had a sterling reputation, a busy practice as a child psychiatrist often working pro bono for the State, and character references that any other man would covet. He seemed very calm and collected, sitting quietly and waiting to do whatever would be required of him.

Next to him sat a charmer of a little girl — a teddy bear clasped tightly to her breast with sparkling butterfly clips in her hair and looking all around her with curiosity. The family court judge didn't miss the way the girl seemed to cling to Dr. Russell's arm tightly with her other hand, turning from time to time to the older woman sitting next to her. The woman would bend to the girl and apparently respond to some question posed to her.

He looked back down at the record of this child — a ward of the courts for three years and apparently a victim of the sometimes broken system. Both of the foster homes in which she had been placed after being taken away from her abusive parents had only served to see her abused again. There was a picture of her taken just a few weeks earlier after being removed from her second foster home — she was listless, curled into a fetal ball on a shelter bed. The report of the caseworker stated that she was completely unresponsive and uncommunicative — catatonic.

The bright little button sitting in the chair in front of him looked quite recovered from that pitiful photo. That, if nothing else, helped erase many of the worries he had had in reviewing the way this adoption had had all the impediments summarily removed and been pushed to the top of his list.

He cleared his voice. "Doctor Russell, I assume you will understand some of my concerns when I note the expeditious manner in which this adoption has been moved to the head of my calendar."

"I do, your honor," Jarod answered and rose to his feet. "And I appreciate your seeing us."

"If you don't mind my asking, why the rush?"

"In the first place," Jarod answered with a glance down at his daughter, "there is no question about my wanting to adopt Ginger. I love her with all my heart and want to have the chance to give her a home and a family she can call her own. In the second place, I am getting ready to move — to go back to Delaware where I was raised. I'll be married there soon, and I have accepted a position with a prominent research and development firm, a position that I need to assume as soon as possible. When I go, I want to take her with me as my legal daughter."

"I would like a chance to talk to the child in my chambers. Would that be agreeable?"

Jarod bent to his daughter. "The judge wants to take you into a room back there and talk to you for a little bit, Sprite. Remember we talked about that?"

Ginger looked at the somber older man in the black robe at the tall desk and then nodded nervously. "Him ask questions?"

"That's right, and you just tell him the truth."

"OK, Daddy." Ginger got to her feet, clutching Bear to her like a shield, and let her father lead her up to the bench.

"She's a little frightened of big men," Jarod warned, shooting a glance at the bailiff — a huge man in a policeman's uniform.

Judge Barbera nodded and then rose and came down from behind his bench. He put out a large hand to the little girl. "Can you come with me for a minute or two?" he asked kindly.

Ginger shot her father a look of nervousness and then carefully put her hand in that of the judge.

"Stay here, Harry," the judge advised his bailiff and opened the door to the office behind his official bench. "You can sit on the couch," he told the girl, releasing her hand. He watched her walk to the couch and climb up on it and then turn to face him, holding her teddy bear tightly with both hands now. He took a seat in a chair not far away. "Who is this?" he asked, pointing at the teddy bear.

"Bear," was the answer, along with a tight squeeze of the toy.

"Where did you get Bear?"

"Daddy gib me."

Evidently she was ready to talk to him now that the ice was broken. Judge Barbera got down to business. "Now, tell me the truth. Do you want to stay with Doctor Russell?"

The dark head bobbed vigorously, making the butterflies sparkle.

"Do you like him?"

"Me lub Daddy," was the quick answer. "Him lub me."

Judge Barbera couldn't miss the fact that she was already calling him 'Daddy.' "Even if he wants to take you a long way away?"

"Me 'tay Daddy," was the firm answer. "Gamma come too."

"It sounds like you have quite a nice family now," he commented invitingly.

The dark head nodded again.

"Does your Daddy take good care of you?"

"Me 'tay Gamma when Daddy wo'k, see Aunt Em an' Unka Naffen an' Sammy too," she replied easily. "Sometime Unka Ee-fan an' Unka Jay."

"Are you going to miss everybody when your Daddy moves you far away?"

She nodded. "But Davy dere — and Gam-pa…"

"Who's Davy?"

The dark eyes twinkled. "Daddy say him bruvver. Him nice — me like him lots."

"A brother?" That brought the judge's eyebrows up. "Does Davy have a mother?"

She nodded again. "Her lub Daddy, an' Daddy lub Her."

"So she's going to be your new Mommy?"

Ginger thought for a moment, then nodded.

"Is that OK with you? Do you like her?"

Ginger nodded again. She had fixed Bear, She had been gentle and kind, She even smelled nice. "Me like Her."

"Well then," the judge stood and put out his hand to her again, "let's go back in and talk to your Daddy some more, OK?"

"OK." Ginger put her hand in the judge's and let him lead her back out into the courtroom, where he released her and watched her scamper quickly back over to Dr. Russell's side and cling tightly to his hand.

The judge took his seat at the bench again and cleared his throat. "Is there anyone else here who would like to speak in regards to this adoption?"

"I would, your honor," Rizzo rose from his seat toward the back of the courtroom. "I know that my report has pictures of Ginger taken just prior to her being placed with Dr. Russell, but I would like to tell you that the change in this child over the period of time Dr. Russell has taken care of her has been nothing short of miraculous. Prior to being removed from the foster home, she hadn't spoken a word for nearly a year — and as you can see now, she is capable of answering questions put to her with more than just a shake or nod of the head. When he came to the shelter to pick her up, she hadn't moved or responded to anyone for over six hours — he had her responding to him within minutes. Since then, Dr. Russell has, in my presence, acted very protectively toward her, especially when she showed signs of stress and terror at a co-worker of mine who was behaving quite inappropriately under the circumstances. It is my opinion that he would be a good father to her and care for her the way a parent should care for a child. He is financially well set and has a more than adequate family support system here — and, from all indications, has an equally adequate support system in Delaware."

"I so rarely hear you give such a glowing referral, Mr. Rizzo," Judge Barbera commented, impressed.

"I so rarely have a reason to give a glowing referral, your honor. This case has bothered me ever since Ginger entered the system and then seemed to have the system fail her so miserably. And once, just once, I'd like to see a kid get the kind of home they deserve without the impediment of an unnecessary and onerous wait."

"Well!" Judge Barbera folded his hands on the paperwork in front of him. "Is there anyone else who would like to speak?" He looked around the room at the sparse scattering of court spectators and other parents and children whose cases were coming before him that morning. "Since there are no objections, and in view of the evidence presented, I can see no reason not to formalize the adoption of this young lady." He bent and signed his name at the bottom of the form finalizing the adoption. "Dr. Russell, this young lady is now officially your daughter — and her birth certificate will be amended to reflect the fact that you are now her father. Her legal name shall henceforth be…" he looked down to make sure he was saying it properly, "…Ginger Elizabeth Russell." He looked back up again. "Congratulations to you both."

"Wha' him say, Daddy?" Ginger tugged on her father's hand and whispered up at him.

"That you're my little girl for real now," Jarod said with a huge lump in his throat, "from now until forever."

"No more take me 'way?"

He bent and picked her up and hugged her tightly. "Nope. Never, never, never again."

"I wish you a good life, Miss Russell," Judge Barbera said with a smile as he watched the two hug and then be joined by the attractive older woman in a group hug. "You are excused. Next case, please."

Margaret grabbed her purse from where she'd been sitting and walked with her son from the courtroom, his new daughter in his arms. The moment the three of them were beyond the door of the courtroom, she sniffled and wound her arm around Jarod's waist. "I can't believe it went so easily."

"Me lub you, Daddy." Ginger had her arms around her father's neck tightly.

"I love you too, Sprite," he answered, kissing her cheek gently, "very much."

"I think this calls for a celebration," Margaret announced, dashing the tears from her cheek. "How about I spring for some ice cream?"

"Yeah!" Ginger cheered from her elevated post in her father's arms.

"Yeah," Jarod breathed and then bent and kissed his mother on the cheek too. "Thanks for being here with me, Mom. It meant a lot."

"It was my pleasure," she answered, wishing with all her heart that Charles could have been here to see this. "And I'm sure your father would have been just as proud of you as I am right now."

Jarod kissed her again and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "I miss him too, Mom. C'mon now. Let's go get ice cream and celebrate."

"Harry, it's Tom."

"Tom! What's up?" Burns frowned — Tom Jackson NEVER called him.

"Have you heard the news?"

"What news?"

"Phil Baldwin is dead."

"Dead!" Burns nearly dropped the receiver. "When did you hear that?"

"It was on the news this morning." There was a pause. "And I haven't been able to reach General Curtis at all."

"What about Harris?"

"Nope."

"Damn!"

"What are we going to do?"

"I'll call George — we'll meet for lunch at Jocko's and discuss this."

"Jocko's at noon. See you then."

Burns put the receiver down carefully and then slammed his fist into the table next to the phone. "Shit!"

Feedback, please:


	19. Shifting Winds

Resolutions – 19

Shifting Winds

by MMB

Sydney watched as Kevin strapped his injured knee back into the infernal therapy 'gizmo' again, knowing that something was different about the young man but not able to put his finger on the difference immediately. It wasn't until the machine was once more slowly working the knee and Kevin had moved the coffee table with its pile of old Centre documents closer again that it hit him: Kevin wasn't looking at him directly.

As a matter of fact, Kevin hadn't been able to meet his gaze all day. He had gladly served as the one to get behind and push the wheelchair from the construction site to the parking lot, where Deb had her Nova pulled up and ready to receive him. He'd then climbed into the back seat behind Deb and Sydney for the ride home and carefully helped pull Sydney from the car still without looking him in the eye. There had been a brief time after getting Sydney sat down on his daybed again when Kevin had vanished toward the front of the house, only to return after a minute or two to take up the task of attaching Sydney's injured leg to the CPM machine. Sydney couldn't be sure, but he thought it might have been during that short interval that Deb had left for her volunteer job at the library.

"Kevin," he called before the young man had a chance to escape again. "Come here for a moment."

Yes, there was something definitely wrong. Kevin's posture had a decided slump to it as the young man came to stand in front of his mentor. "What can I do for you?" he asked.

"Look at me, for one thing," Sydney said quietly, his eyes on Kevin's face. The intense blue eyes came up and met with the chestnut — but only for a moment before looking away. "Tell me what's wrong," Sydney directed, pointing to the chair across the room with an obvious expectation that Kevin would sit down.

"Nothing's wrong," Kevin complained softly, feeling the dread of this confrontation almost smothering him as he took the seat indicated.

"One of the things that is never taught to a Pretender is the art of lying effectively to those close to him," Sydney stated as if lecturing. "Jarod was never very good at it in all the years I worked with him, and you're even worse at it than he was." He folded his arms across his chest expectantly.

"Sydney…"

"AND you're acting as if you have something weighing very heavily on your conscience." Sydney looked at him evenly. "What's going on, Kevin? Maybe I can help…"

"That I doubt," Kevin mumbled to himself and then forced himself to look at his mentor. "Really, Sydney, I'd rather we waited…"

"Waiting rarely does any good in the long term," Sydney replied. "Is it something so terrible that you're afraid to tell me?"

Kevin's blue eyes glanced up at Sydney's again. "Yes." He looked back down. "I'm afraid it will make you angry."

"If it does, then the sooner it's out, the sooner I'm finished being angry," Sydney said simply. "What is it?" Kevin had looked away, down at the plush Persian rug on the floor of the den. "Kevin," he called again, bringing Kevin's gaze up again, "what is it?"

"It's about Deb…" Kevin began lamely, then wished he hadn't said anything.

"Deb?" Sydney was concerned and confused.

"…A…and me," Kevin finished, knowing that he'd gone too far now, that the situation was bound to come out for sure.

Sydney's brows furled for a long moment while he contemplated what he'd been told, and then suddenly he looked up at his protégé very sharply. "Are you telling me that you and Deb…"

"It just happened," Kevin sighed. Now he was in for it — this was the first time he had definitely done anything that he knew for sure would disappoint and probably anger his new mentor. Just disappointing Vernon had always meant suffering a tirade that inevitably included a withering attack on his self-esteem and the loss of some if not all of the few privileges he had — he still didn't like to think of what happened when Vernon actually got mad. He'd lived with Sydney now long enough to know that mere disappointment didn't bring about long, loud, abusive verbal tantrums — but he had yet to see Sydney genuinely out of sorts with him. And as much as he loved Deb and wasn't ashamed of what they'd done and decided, facing Sydney's unknown wrath for not using restraint with something so important was not an experience he was looking forward to…

"It didn't just happen," Sydney scowled. "I thought I had warned you…"

"You did! And I tried to stop… but…" Kevin was pleading for understanding. "She asked…"

"You didn't have to say 'yes!'" Sydney snapped at him.

"I couldn't say 'no' by then," Kevin admitted. "Things happened so fast…"

Sydney wiped his hand down his face in frustration and real pique. This was his granddaughter they were talking about here, the apple of his eye… "Kevin…" he ground out. "For God's sake, she was just starting to get over being molested. Now…"

"Now when she wakes up with a nightmare from that experience, and she has the last two nights, I've been right there with her," Kevin said softly, finding strength at last from the fact that he loved Deb and knew that she loved him. "I help her find her way out of that horrible place and get back to sleep eventually." Finally he raised his eyes to meet and face Sydney's. "I love her, Sydney, and she loves me. I know you didn't want this to happen, but it has."

"Kevin, you haven't been out in the world long enough to know anything about love," Sydney closed his eyes and tried to keep from simply exploding. He could hardly believe that all it had taken was for him to leave the house for two nights, lost in his own turmoil… "Damn it, don't you see? Deb is hurting, and she's reaching for anything and anyone she thinks can help her heal quickly from what was done to her — and you're the closest and safest person she has to reach out to right now. That is not a good place to be in and try to put together a lasting relationship."

"That may be," Kevin agreed reluctantly, but then continued with more vehemence, "but we've talked it over, and we're thinking about marriage eventually."

"WHAT?" Sydney started to shake his head back and forth violently. "No! Absolutely not! You are NOT going to be considering marriage for a good, long time. Neither of you two are ready…"

"We know what we want," Kevin told him in a voice that was much steadier than he felt on the inside. "You can ask Deb…"

"Oh, you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be talking to Deb the moment she gets home," Sydney told him with real anger in his eyes along with a touch of betrayal. "For God's sake, Kevin, I trusted you to not let things get too involved."

"I know you did," the young man admitted, "and I'm sorry that I didn't live up to that and that I've disappointed you, but…" and he looked back up at his mentor with the strength of his heart behind his eyes, "I'm not sorry we did what we did. I love her — I've loved her since I first laid eyes on her. If anything, I love her now more than ever. I'd never do anything to hurt her."

"I was thinking and hoping that your feelings for her would keep you from doing anything rash," Sydney shook his head at him. "And what about your promise to Tyler? What does this do to that?"

Kevin sagged in his chair even further than he had been at first. He'd forgotten all about Tyler and the promise that had been made. "You're right. I'll have to go talk to him," he sighed. "It would be only fair — I did break my word, but..." He looked up at his mentor again pleadingly. "…What was I supposed to do? I've always loved her…"

"Use your brain, Kevin — think! You haven't known more than two girls near your age in all the time you've been free from that house. There is a whole world out here, filled with young women. How do you know…"

"I know, Sydney," Kevin replied seriously. "Don't ask me how, but I just know. She's the one."

Sydney stopped short and really looked at the expression in Kevin's eyes. He'd seen that look only one time before — in Jarod's eyes when talking once about his relationship with Miss Parker not long after he had returned to Delaware. That relationship had ended up being as preordained as anything he'd ever seen — even an eight-year separation had proven to be just a minor blip in the scheme of their love for each other.

Suddenly Sydney found himself hoping beyond hope that Deb wouldn't grow tired of her Pretender as she healed from her California experience — that the depth of her love for him truly matched Kevin's deep devotion to her. An inner voice that he heard only very rarely was whispering to him that this was the real thing, and that the safest bet for him was to stand back, give the young couple his blessing and try to explain things to Broots when the time came. He felt a sudden shot of guilt — Broots was going to be livid when he found out!

But… damn it! This was still his granddaughter, the girl he'd coddled for years and helped her father protect from horny, marauding males since the beginning of high school. And now she had slept with his own protégé at least twice — under HIS roof — the minute his back was turned!

"We'll talk about this further when Deb gets home," Sydney pronounced with a voice of finality and reached for the top folder in the stack on the coffee table.

Kevin sighed. The ordeal wasn't over yet.

"This is Tyler."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Tyler. This is Colonel Fox."

Tyler leaned back in his chair. "Well! We were starting to wonder what was happening with our military problem."

"Suffice it to say that you should have no further military problems, Mr. Tyler. The principles involved in the effort to pressure your corporation into working on these ugly little projects are all in custody — and the civilian authorities will soon be beginning to clean up their side of the problem." Fox smiled in satisfaction. "Quite an interesting little conspiracy you folks tripped over."

"Were you informed that one of our scientists DID agree to restart his project — project Black Hole, to be specific — and led our security people to a small safe where additional materials and drugs were being stored?" Tyler grinned, spinning a pencil through his nimble fingers.

"I hadn't had that report hit my desk yet," Fox admitted. "So you have your end of things cleaned up as well?"

"Yup. I'm just wondering if you're going to be needing any of that evidence for your case?"

"I seriously doubt it," Fox told him. "We have quite a comprehensive case put together against the military men involved already. Although, I suppose, copies of any printed material would be appreciated as corroborating evidence when telephone transcripts between your scientist and the defendants is presented."

Tyler quit twirling the pencil and made a note on the day's blotter. "I'll see to it that you get copies of all the printed material we just recovered." He leaned back again. "What do you intend to do about Colonel Stiller?"

"He will most likely be taken into military custody within a day or so of hearing that the civilian end of this has been swept up. Right now, he's doing just fine in your local jail cell."

"I understand that," Tyler told him, "but I have a very nervous scientist insisting on staying in a safe house. When will I be able to reassure her that she's safe to go back to her own home?"

Fox nodded. "This is Dr. Mitchell you're speaking of, isn't it?"

"Ah-yup."

"I'd say that she's safe to go home now. We have a DNA match with her and the blood on the knife we took from Stiller when he was taken into custody after breaking into her house. We have transcripts of telephone conversations between Stiller and other co-conspirators where her attack was discussed. Hell, we have his co-conspirators in the military — up to and including a one-star General attached to the Pentagon — in custody. He's not getting away with anything, trust me." Fox's voice was completely convinced.

"I'll pass the word," Tyler promised.

"What about the scientist our bozos actually connected with?"

Tyler smiled coldly. "We are holding him for civilian authorities the moment we get his project notes decrypted — you see, there's the question of the test subjects on whom the process was used. We still don't know where they came from or what happened to them." He grimaced. "When we had our bombing, there were a number of psychiatric patients that had to be relocated to other institutions — I'm hoping that some of the documentation YOU recovered will tell us whether any of them were involved."

"I hadn't thought of that," Fox shivered. "I'll have our office copy all the information on Black Hole and send it to you by courier — the more complete your information, the more likely your internal investigation on that score will be successful."

"Well, thank you for calling and bringing us up to date," Tyler said, leaning forward to his desk again. "When this is all over, would you let this Texas boy buy you a drink?"

"Why sure, son," Fox smiled. "I'll look forward to it. Until then, I'll talk to you later."

"Thanks again, Colonel."

Tyler replaced the receiver and smiled to himself. With any luck, maybe he could learn what it meant to be an executive of a corporation NOT on the edge of a crisis soon. Then again, he'd learned the hard way not to hold his breath when it came to dealing with the 'old Centre'. Just about the time he started to relax, sure as shootin' something new would pop up…

"Get in the car — hurry up!" Harry Burns gave Tom Jackson a shove to get him into the back seat quickly and then jumped into the front passenger seat. "Go, Jim!" he yelled at his driver, and the sedan sped away from the curb.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" George Canfield demanded, still struggling to put his seat belt on after having been shoved to the other side of the car rather rudely. "I thought we were going to eat lunch…"

"For God's sake, Harry…" Jackson added.

"Can it, you two! We can't take ANY chances right now," Burns turned halfway around in his seat and peered out the back window in satisfaction as the car he'd suspected of tailing him swung out into traffic as expected. "Things are going down hard and fast, and if we aren't careful, they'll drag us down right with them. There's a tail on us — nine chances out of ten, whoever is investigating us has had our phones tapped and now had Jocko's wired for sound, just waiting for us to hang ourselves over lunch today. This is the ONLY way we could talk without being overheard."

"What the hell happened? I thought things were going so well — and that Black Hole was just about to go back into operation…" Canfield glared at his colleagues.

"Phil Baldwin panicked and got himself killed, that's one thing," Burns growled, "and I'll bet that while they were picking up the pieces, they found his files."

"How tightly do you think we're tied into things through Phil?" Jackson worried, looking back and forth between his colleague in the front seat and in the back.

"Knowing Phil and his habit of maintaining meticulous and very complete records, I'd say we need to assume they have fairly completely but circumstantial stuff that a bit more investigation will probably corroborate," Burn answered. "What's more, it looks like the military is starting to clean house as well. I called over to the Pentagon for Doug and was informed that he had been arrested last night on an assortment of charges."

"Shit!" Canfield exploded. "We can't just sit here and wait for the axe to fall on us. There are people who have paid us very well sitting out there and depending on us to get things done… Not to mention I didn't sign into this little venture just to end up looking out from behind bars…"

"Calm down, you two! We have to go on the offensive, and go on the offensive NOW," Jackson stated quietly. "Panicking like Phil did will get us nowhere. We need to create a huge and spectacular diversion to get everybody's mind off of what WE may have been doing — long enough for it to simply go away."

"I take it you have an idea?" Burns asked curiously.

"I do," the Vermont Senator said calmly. "We talked about this before, but nobody ever did anything about it. All of our problems now have to do with the Centre and the projects they just threw back at us, right? Fine. We'll put a spotlight on the Centre's past — make them have to defend themselves against their own past actions, both personally and professionally."

"But the current Centre administration…"

"Will be too busy putting together some sort of a defense to be cooperating with any other on-going investigation," Jackson detailed with a smooth smile. "What's more, considering the kind of evidence we have on the projects the Centre has already done for us, we'll capture the media attention away from any complicated investigation of a few Senators and put it all on what the Centre has been up to for the past ten, twenty years." He smiled grimly. "By the time the dust settles, we'll be retiring from office or have been turned out due to term limits."

"I don't know," Canfield worried. "The last time we went up against the Centre directly, we ended up losing one of our top military contacts — and probably setting off half of what's coming down around us now. Do we REALLY want to try it again?"

"Do we have any choice?" Burns asked in a defeated tone. He looked at his colleagues in the back seat, and then nodded. "OK. We dig into our personal files and find something truly egregious to get the ball rolling — then sit back and let the media dig up the dirt for us. Sooner or later, George here can demand a hearing on how a high-security corporation like the Centre could have gotten away with such despicable actions."

"That will have several retired Senators twisting in the wind," Jackson nodded agreement, "which will once more draw attention away from US."

"As for us, no more formal meetings," Canfield demanded. "If we have our phones tapped, and if we each have tails, then the less contact we have with each other right now, the better."

"But we have to coordinate with each other…" Jackson complained immediately. "This IS the Centre we're talking about. Even under the Parker woman, it doesn't do to underestimate their reach and their power. If we don't get together after we gather our evidence and strategize how to take the best advantage of it, we aren't going to get anywhere."

"All right," Burns conceded. "Get into your files today and tonight and pull up anything you think might cause a major news stink — and Tom, you get YOUR driver to pick us up at noon tomorrow. I'll be waiting outside my office, George…"

"I have a caucus meeting at the Capitol at ten — I'll be just getting out."

"Fine — we'll pick you up at quarter after twelve. We meet in moving vehicles from now on, and we'll choose random vehicles. We may even want to just hire a taxi — it would be unexpected at least once."

"This is ridiculous," Canfield grumbled. "We should NEVER have brought Phil into this…"

"Shut up!" Burns snapped back. "He was the best money-handler I knew of, he had contacts within several law enforcement agencies that worked to our advantage when it came time to provide test subjects for our projects — and we needed someone with his expertise with bigger projects like Veracity and Black Hole to keep all the various arrangements running smoothly. I had no idea he'd turn into a big chicken when push came to shove — and then be stupid enough to get himself killed on top of it all."

"We simply can NOT afford any more mistakes," Jackson intoned somberly. "We have one chance — and a damned slim one at that — to pull ourselves out of the fire before we get singed and make the Centre pay for putting us out of business. We'd better make the best of it."

"This is Parker."

"Hi, Missy. It's me."

"Jarod! Well?" The grey eyes stared out her window expectantly.

"She's mine at last. Ginger Elizabeth Russell." Jarod hugged his little girl close as she sat next to him on the picnic table bench as if he couldn't get enough of holding her. She was his daughter — HIS. Nobody would ever threaten or harm this child again without going over or through his dead body.

Miss Parker smiled softly. "I remember how it felt when the judge pronounced Davy mine at last," she remembered. "I don't think my feet touched the ground for a week. It got so bad, I guess, that even Broots and Sydney were laughing at me for a while. So…" she leaned her chin into her hand, forgetting the paperwork in front of her entirely for the moment, "what did you decide to do to celebrate — go out for Pez or something?"

"You're close," Jarod laughed out loud. "We're sitting in a Baskin Robbins eating ice cream — Mom's treat."

"She went with you?"

"Yeah." He gazed fondly at his mother. "And I'm glad she did."

"Please tell me this means that you'll be needing the jet tomorrow… Is your packing done?"

"Packing's almost done, but not for tomorrow. I still have a few loose ends to tie up at the office and elsewhere — and Em's throwing a going-away dinner for Sprite and me tomorrow night. Have the jet here and ready Saturday morning — we'll be in the air by nine our time at the latest."

"I can't wait," she commented earnestly. "It's time you came home, Jarod. I need you HERE, and Davy misses you terribly…"

"I'm coming, Missy — with my daughter and your future mother-in-law." He smiled. "How are things going on your end today… Oh geez, I didn't even think – did I interrupt…"

"No, I was just looking over some research contracts," she soothed. "Things are actually starting to look up today for a change — Tyler called a while back to say that our contact in the Pentagon says that our problem with the military wanting to restart some of those 'old Centre-style' projects shouldn't be an issue for us anymore. The construction on the new Tower building is progressing nicely…" She looked out her window again, this time actually seeing the beams and girders that were the slowly growing Tower jutting more than two stories into the air now.

"How's Sydney?"

"Back to putting up a good front, probably. I think he should probably be your first patient when you get back here, Dr. Russell," she closed her eyes. "He's doing a Post-Traumatic Stress number on us — all the shit from his days at Dachau that he's kept locked away all this time has broken loose…"

"Damn! I'll see if he'll let me work with him once I get there," Jarod promised. "How did he sleep last night?"

"I'm not sure — I haven't had a chance to talk to him yet," she admitted. "Kevin and Deb picked him up after Bennett sprung him from Renewal & Medical. I'll probably go over after supper tonight — I made him promise me yesterday that he'd talk to me, share some of what he's been keeping locked away. I don't intend to let him off the hook now."

"Be careful and don't press too hard. And if he gets too upset with what he's remembering and sharing with you, tell Kevin to give him one of his old pain meds," Jarod suggested. "Those things used to knock him out flat for the better part of a night — and he's going to need something to move him past his nightmares so he can rest and heal from everything else."

"I'll talk to Kevin and see what I can do," she promised, "but you know how Sydney gets when it comes to taking medication…"

Jarod shook his head. "He can be a stubborn old man," he commented dryly, slipping a glance at his mother, who was listening to the discussion of the person who was the reason for her accompanying him to Delaware with great interest. "Have you told him about Mom coming to meet him yet?"

"Not yet," she admitted. "I'll tell him tonight — that will give him a day or so to get used to the idea. Have you talked to your Mom about how he's not doing so good…"

"Some. I'll lay out the whole thing to her on the plane," he promised. "I should let you go — and I have a little girl with a sticky face…" He grinned down into Ginger's face, which now had vanilla and chocolate completely ringing her mouth.

"I love you," Miss Parker breathed. "I can't wait for Saturday."

"It's just two more days, Missy," he said softly. "I love you too, and I miss you. I'll call you later tonight."

"Give me a REAL late night call," she chuckled, "the kind you used to – just for old time's sake?"

Jarod chuckled in a low and intimate tone. "I can do that. Tell me, will you answer the way you used to?"

"I'll try to remember," she lowered her voice until it was sultry and provocative, sending chills of desire down Jarod's spine.

"Until tonight, then," he responded in a tone that was slightly shaky. He couldn't remember how long it had been since they'd last played this provocative game of subtext and insinuation — and he had forgotten just how stimulating it could be playing with someone who was as much a master at it as he was. God he missed her!

She smiled. Mission accomplished — now she knew that he missed her at least as much as she missed him. "Until tonight, Wonder-boy," she whispered intimately. She disconnected the call and hung up her receiver, and then landed her chin in her palm again with a wistful sigh, still ignoring the contracts on her desk in front of her. Knowing that the time before he'd be with her again was growing shorter by the minute was not helped by the fact that time seemed to be absolutely crawling.

"Miss Parker? Your two-thirty appointment is here," Mei-Chiang announced in a business-like tone over the intercom.

Miss Parker shook herself mentally, closed the folder over the contract, and pushed the button. "Send her in," she said and straightened in her chair. First things first.

Deb pulled her little Nova into the garage, marveling at how easy it was to do that when Grandpa's big Lincoln wasn't already there. She shut off the engine and climbed from behind the wheel. Her afternoon had been very relaxing and fun — several of the elementary school kids that lived in the neighborhood had been in to check out new books, and she'd been able to arrange to sit down in a far corner of the children's books section and do an impromptu story-time. The librarian had nodded and given her permission when she'd asked, knowing that Deb had been in charge of such a thing when she'd worked there before.

She opened the door from the garage into the kitchen and dropped her keys into her purse, which she left on the very end of the kitchen counter where it had found a place since moving in with Grandpa. Kevin, at the refrigerator getting himself a cold drink, turned quickly and crooked his finger at her to follow him into the hallway. "He knows," he said briefly once they were hopefully out of earshot of the den.

Deb nodded. Kevin had been acting in a very guilty way around Sydney, and one of the major themes of their discussions over the past day and a half had been about how he feared her father and grandfather were going to be angry with him. It wasn't surprising that he hadn't been able to resist her grandfather's considerable talent for worming out uncomfortable truths. "And?"

"He's not happy," Kevin said, knowing the description to be completely inadequate.

"Deb? Can you come in here for a bit, please?" Sydney's voice called from the den.

The two young people looked at each other in sympathy, then Deb turned her steps to answer his call. Kevin walked behind her and, just before she went through the door, threaded his fingers with hers supportively. "Hi, Grandpa," Deb greeted the older man with a smile. She really was glad he was home and safe — he was such a large part of what made her feel safe and secure now. Even if he was upset with her…

"Kevin, I'd prefer to talk to my granddaughter alone, if you don't mind," Sydney said to his protégé pointedly.

The dismissal stung, but Kevin nodded agreement. He dropped a rebellious kiss on Deb's cheek before turning and leaving the room, and Deb watched him walk back into the kitchen. Then she turned to Sydney. "Yes?"

"Sit down. I'd like to talk to you," he said, pointing to the same chair in which Kevin had sat only a few hours earlier. He then watched her throw her blonde braid over her shoulder casually, walk across the room in front of him and take her seat demurely.

How he loved her — this granddaughter of the heart! He had been allowed the supreme privilege of watching her bloom from cute but awkward pre-teen into a bubbling teenager and now into a charming and beautiful young woman. He had felt a true kinship with Broots in protecting her from the raging hormones of her occasional dates in high school, almost rejoicing that she had never found anyone she liked well enough to 'go steady.'

Her kidnap and assault had distressed him greatly, but he'd considered that he had her feet firmly planted on the road to recovery. If things had gone as he had hoped, she wouldn't have even considered anything more than just a platonic relationship with Kevin or anybody else at least until the nightmares had abated. Now he was in the position of having to do damage control as the result of the relationship turning abruptly and unexpectedly intimate, and he would not have the luxury of being anything less than totally frank and blunt to find out just where the harm had happened.

"Kevin told me that circumstances between the two of you have changed," he opened the topic cautiously.

Deb, it seemed, was far less guilty about what had happened. "Yes, I know," she answered. "He told me you weren't very happy about it too."

"Deb…"

"But to be completely honest with you, I'm not sorry about anything, Grandpa, except that it makes you upset," she said calmly. "I didn't intend to do this now, or wait until the first time you weren't here to…"

"Sleep with him?" he finished for her, to be repaid when she looked at him sharply. "Tell me, did it answer all of your questions for you?"

"Yes." She raised her chin in defiance. If Grandpa wanted to be blunt, he'd get blunt in return. "It answered most of them, anyway. For one thing, I didn't freak out while we were making out — which was the worst thing I'd been afraid of. And the sex didn't hurt like I thought it would either — actually, it felt good…"

Sydney sighed. That wasn't the point at all — and he could really do without the defiance and bravado. There was, unfortunately, only one quick and effective way to get past that — going straight to the heart of her current emotional agony. "Tell me, did finding out what it felt like to have intercourse with a man do any good in chasing your nightmares away?" She opened her eyes wide at the complete bluntness of the question, and Sydney could tell he'd knocked much of that defiance away as he had intended. "That IS why you wanted to have sex with him in the first place, was it not?"

"Yes." She knew he could tell if she was lying, so didn't even bother. She should have known that he was able to read her far better than anybody she'd ever met — including her father.

"So, did it do any good?"

The blue eyes finally wavered and eventually found the pattern of the rug at her feet. "No. It just changed the context of the dream."

"And so now you have Kevin in your nightmare too," he told her. She nodded. "Is it Kevin that molests you now, or chases you?"

"No," she said softly. "Now I begin the dream making love with Kevin — and it's good — and then slowly everything changes until…"

"You're being raped by the man who molested you instead. Now he isn't merely touching you, like what really happened, but actually having sex with you." He'd been afraid this would happen.

"Yes." The answer was whispered.

At the kitchen door, Kevin had to work hard not to gasp out loud in shock and total dismay. No wonder she was so upset when she awoke — or fought his attempts to hold her close until she broke free of the dream — she thought he was THAT man! And then he finally processed what had been revealed before that — that she'd had sex with him the first time NOT because she loved him or wanted HIM, but just to find out what it felt like. It was like a punch to the gut. He had been nothing but a convenient and available male.

Sydney's sharp ears caught the tiny sound of new emotional agony from just beyond the kitchen door and winced inwardly. This was what he'd been afraid of – that the two of them, in their naïveté and eagerness, would have prepared the ground to hurt each other dreadfully through misunderstanding and inexperience. Now there would be damage control that would be needed with Kevin too, to repair what the truth about Deb's initial agenda had caused to a very tender and vulnerable heart.

Kevin walked from the door to the den and into the living room in a fog of confusion and disappointment. But… he loved her, didn't he? She loved him, didn't she? Or was it all just a healthy case of lust and poor impulse control on his part and the intent to use him in an experiment on Deb's? Was Sydney right – did he truly know nothing about what love was? She'd said that they would marry eventually – had that been nothing but illusion as well?

Not wanting to stay in the house one moment longer, he walked very deliberately and slowly out the front door and across the street to the grass under his favorite tree. He then stood trying to do the breathing exercises to ground himself to begin the kata, praying desperately that the exercise would allow him to clear his mind so that he could think more effectively later.

Sydney gazed at his granddaughter sadly. "So having intercourse with Kevin didn't help matters at all, in fact."

"But it did," she insisted, looking up now. "I found out that Kevin loves me – a lot – and that I love him too – at least as much. He's kind and gentle, and he takes such good care of me when I'm trying to wake up from one of those nightmares. I'm not sorry one bit that I didn't listen to him when he kept trying to stop things that first time. It just felt so good to have someone touch me and not have it hurt when he finally made love to me…"

"Kevin tried to stop you?" Sydney winced again. Deb was a headstrong girl – if she had decided ahead of time that she would eventually sleep with Kevin, and the circumstances had lent themselves to her cause, Kevin could very well have tried to heed his mentor's wishes without the slightest chance of succeeding.

"Several times. Once even just before we…" Deb made an unconscious but telling gesture and then finally found it to be something that made her blush. "I could tell it was hard for him..."

"How many of your reasons for wanting to make love with him did he understand ahead of time?" Sydney asked. "Did he know that what you did was as much to see what it was like as it was anything else?"

"I don't know," she answered with real lack of knowledge. "It just happened so fast, I don't think…" She paused to think. "I would never hurt him." She thought again, and leaned forward earnestly. "Grandpa, you do realize that Kevin would be the only one I'd ever want to be with, don't you? I love him… I've loved him for a while now…"

"Listen to me," Sydney said urgently. "You are in a place where you are going to hurt him very badly if he thinks your real reasons for having sex with him initially had nothing to do with HIM. I know…" he put up his hands when she started to object, "…that you say you have fallen in love with him and he with you. I believe you, but that's frankly beside the point. What you have to realize is that Kevin has, at best, an idealized view of love and the way life works. Anything other than the most idealized reasons for sleeping with him will have a negative impact on his psyche – and, believe it or not, Kevin is a very fragile person."

"I love him," Deb stated firmly. "I want to marry him – maybe even have his kids someday. I'd never do anything to hurt him…"

"You may already have hurt him, ma petite," Sydney told her sadly. "I didn't realize it, but he was listening to our conversation – especially to that part when you told me point blank that you'd had sex with him to find out what it felt like. I heard his reaction – he didn't take it well."

"GRANDPA!!" Deb leapt to her feet. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I misjudged him," Sydney admitted ruefully. "I hadn't considered that he would have waited at the kitchen door to see what we talked about – probably with the intent of using that knowledge to help you as much as he could later on, or comforting you if I got too angry with you and chewed too hard. He was trying to protect you — and now it's backfired on him by giving information he really didn't need to know."

"I have to find him… talk to him…"

"Let him alone for a while," Sydney shook his head. "He may not be able to hear you right now. Besides, we have a few more matters to discuss…"

Deb looked down at her grandfather. "I know you mean well, Grandpa, but right now I need to make things right with Kevin. Everything else can wait until later. I can't let what he heard you and me talking about ruin what the two of US have. I can't live without him…" With the beginnings of a tear in her eye, she bolted from the room.

Sydney sighed and leaned back against his pillows feeling both old and helpless. He'd seen the expression in his granddaughter's eye as well just now – she loved Kevin deeply. It hadn't just been a case of uncontrolled libido after maybe the first time — and maybe she was right that even the first time might have been as much about Kevin as it had been about trying to erase the memory of one man's touch with another's.

As much as he might disapprove of how it had come about, he had a young couple beginning a life together under his roof. It would be both in his and their best interests to help them resolve this unexpected wrinkle in their new relationship as soon as possible.

No doubt Kevin would be in to talk to him about what he'd heard eventually. Hopefully he could manage to smooth any ruffled feathers then that Deb missed now. And in the meantime, he could start to try to figure out how to explain the situation to Broots in such a way that his old friend would give his daughter and her chosen mate the same benefit of the doubt, and save them any more grief from that direction.

Deb trotted through to the front of the house and peered into the living room, only to find the room empty. She happened to glance out the big picture window, however, and that was when she saw him, standing beneath the old oak tree across the street, going through his martial arts exercise with a quietly desperate look on his face. Sydney was right – he HAD heard, and he HAD been hurt by the truth of the situation at first.

She took a deep breath and walked out the front door, down the sidewalk, across the street, and finally came to a stop a few paces in front of him. "We need to talk," she said as calmly as she could.

"What is there to say?" he demanded bitterly, continuing his exercise with difficulty but unwilling to give up the movements at least – they kept her away from him physically. The moment she got too close to him, he knew his mind stopped working right as his body and his heart took over.

"I want to explain…" she pleaded. "Grandpa said you were listening…"

"I was — I didn't mean to, but now I guess it's better that I did," he snapped at her as his exercise turned him ninety degrees in another direction and away from her. "At least I won't go through life thinking you made love to me that first time because you wanted me."

"What are you talking about? Of COURSE I wanted you!" she retorted.

"No you didn't." Kevin gave up the exercise and whirled to accuse her to her face. "I was just a convenient man – and anyone with pants and a penis would have done…"

"How dare you!" Deb was incensed. "Do you honestly think I would have let just anybody touch me? Hell, if that were the case, why do you think having that man paw me all over and put his fingers inside me would have given me nightmares?"

"But…" Now he was confused again, and he was starting to really hate being confused all the time when it came to Deb. "You told Sydney that he was right – that you had sex with me just to find out what it was like…"

"I know that's what you heard, but listen to me! You knew some of that to start with, or at least I thought you did — I thought I told you I needed to know whether I could ever let anybody touch me again… But Kevin, YOU have always been the only man I've ever actually WANTED that way." She gazed at him sadly. "I knew that you cared for me, and that I cared for you too – and I knew that making love with me for you wouldn't just be something that you'd hang on the wall like a trophy, or brag about to Sydney or maybe to Tyler…"

"I would never do anything like that…" Kevin was beyond astounded.

"I know," Deb said gently and finally put out a hand and took his with great care. "And that's part of the reason I love you, Kevin. Nothing has changed. I wanted to be with you that first night, and I want to be with you now. When I agreed with Grandpa that that I had wanted to know what sex was like, what I was really saying was that I had wanted to know what being with YOU was like – I wasn't talking about sex in general with just anybody with pants and a penis. Can you understand that?"

Kevin shook his head. "No," he said sadly. "Sydney's right, I don't understand anything at all about love or relationships. I don't understand you at all."

"There's only one thing you need to understand about love right now," Deb told him and stepped closer. "And that is that I love you, Kevin Green, with my whole heart. Please don't push me away. I don't want to live without you beside me. I couldn't take it."

He stared down into her face. He wanted to trust her, but his confidence in her love for him had been shaken badly. He couldn't see any sign that she was telling him anything but the truth as she knew it, and it was obvious that she was desperate to make him believe her — but still... He put out his arms and gathered her to him roughly and held her as tightly as he could. "God, Deb! I want to believe you…"

Deb closed her eyes and swallowed hard, knowing that something completely pure and untarnished had been damaged — how badly and whether it could be repaired was yet to be seen. She put her arms around him and held him just as tightly as he was holding her. "Hush," she soothed, her hands moving in gentle circles at his back. "Everything will be OK, Kevin, you'll see. We'll be OK. I love you, and you'll see that you CAN believe me. I love you so much it hurts…" She leaned her head against his shoulder and swallowed as a tear fell to her cheek.

"I want to believe you," he murmured into her neck brokenly. "But I don't know what I'm doing here anymore — this is all so much more complicated than I thought it would be. I really thought that you wanted ME that night..."

"I did! For me, wanting to experience sex meant wanting YOU — the two were never separate thoughts," she tried to reassure him again and pressed herself tightly against him. "God, please don't doubt me like this."

Kevin captured her lips with his in a fiery and passionate kiss, still not entirely convinced and desperate for reassurance anyway he could get it. Deb returned his passion measure for measure, holding him possessively and eagerly. Her kiss almost convinced him — but only almost. Even now, with all of her reassurances, there was a niggling little doubt in the back of his mind. Deb knew so much more about all of this than he did, knew the nuances — and knew what she might be able to get away with by banking on his ignorance in the matter. The doubt was like a tiny kernel of agony in the middle of his heart.

And even with her pliant and willing in his arms now, that shard of agony wouldn't go away.

"Miss Parker, Mr. Tyler was wondering if you had time to see him for a minute." Mei-Chiang announced over the intercom.

"Send him in," Miss Parker sighed and closed down the folder of research contracts. It was getting late, and her mind didn't want to focus on work anymore. She had a long talk with Sydney yet to come, as well as an interesting phone call from Jarod to look forward to. She pushed the folder back and then leaned back in her chair as her Executive Assistant walked through the door and ambled to one of the chairs in front of her desk. "Almost quitting time, Sir Edmond."

"I know — and I wanted to talk to you before you took off tonight." Tyler crossed his long legs in front of him. "I know I'm kinda new to the rules and regs of living life at the Centre's upper stratosphere…"

"What's on your mind?" she interrupted. "Something wrong?"

"No, well… I don't know yet," he answered honestly. "I need to know where the lines in the sand are regarding relationships with fellow employees here at the Centre."

Miss Parker's eyebrows soared and she breathed a secret sigh of relief. This was a personal matter — nothing earth shattering or sanity threatening. "What kind of relationship — or do I need to ask?"

"A certain lady here has… caught my eye, as it were. I need to know if there are any restrictions on taking a professional relationship and making it into a possibly romantic one."

"And the lady in question is…" Miss Parker pried carefully.

"Xing-Li."

The brows soared higher. "Here and I thought you were interested in Deb Broots. Didn't you and Kevin nearly come to blows…"

"Yeah," he admitted, "but Deb and I only went out the one time before…" He halted — he still didn't like to think about what had happened to her. "Besides, face it — he's there with her at Sydney's, and I'm working here. He's there for her, and I'm not. He promised he'd keep things neutral until she was ready to deal with the both of us again, but to be honest, I don't know how, with things as they are, that he'll be able to keep his word. When she needs a shoulder, she'll have to go to either Sydney or Kevin — and I won't even know that anything happened. It'll be awfully hard for him to STAY neutral, no matter how hard he tries."

"You're giving up?"

"I'm facing reality," he corrected her, "and moving on. Besides, I've found that there's an equally interesting and intriguing lady far closer to my own world right now — and so we return to the question of whether there's a problem…"

Miss Parker folded her arms over her chest. "Do you think there will be a problem, Tyler? Can you keep your professional life and your personal life completely separate, to the point that if you have problems between you personally, you both will still be able to do your job properly?"

Tyler's dark eyes met hers solidly. "I'd like to think so, ma'am."

"What does Xing-Li think of this?"

Tyler's face grew chagrined. "She's firmly convinced that we occupy different planetary spheres practically," he replied. "The other night, I invited her out for ice cream and had to work harder than I've ever had to just to convince her to say yes." He scratched his head.

"Sounds like she's trying to keep that part of her life as far distant from work as she can," she commented quietly.

"I told her that I'd ask you if there were any problems to our seeing whether we could have a professional association and a private relationship, so that we'd both know how things sat before we tried anything. She agreed that I should speak to you." He blinked at her. "So, what do you think?"

Miss Parker pressed her lips together. "If the two of you worked in separate offices, there'd be no problem at all — I have no problem with Mei-Chiang and Sam, for example. The question here is if you can have a close professional association and a romance at the same time without either ruining the romance or getting your emotions tangled in your work situation."

"I know. That's why I wanted to talk to you first." Tyler could see her weighing her thoughts on the matter carefully.

"I'll allow it on one condition," she said finally after long and careful consideration.

"Name it."

"That if things start to get sticky, one relationship or the other HAS to go." Her grey eyes were serious and quite decided. "You'll have to decide, at that point, whether you wanted to live without your secretary or your girlfriend — because you couldn't have both." She folded her arms across her chest. "All it will take will be one hint of trouble reaching me — whether you're aware of it or not — and I'll be in your office telling you that you'll have to choose which you keep and which you lose. I'm not sure a close work relationship and a close romantic relationship can survive for long, if you want to know the truth — although I'm open to being proven wrong on the point. But those are my terms. Do you agree?"

Tyler thought about it for a while and could see that, given her obvious hesitancy about having both a close work and person relationship, she was still giving him room to make a proper go of it on both fronts if he could manage it. "Agreed." He smiled. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she smiled at him and stretched. "I wish all my problems here were so easily disposed of. I've been staring at these damned things for over an hour now…" She pushed at the file folders with frustrated fingers. "Have you got anything going on first thing tomorrow morning? I could really use an extra brain helping me think through the terms of these contracts…"

"I'll make the time," Tyler replied, rising. "I'll be in at eight — with coffee — and we'll check out those contracts and get them out of your hair."

"Thanks," she rose as well. "I mean that," she appended, serious all of a sudden. "You've been a God-send and about as dependable an assistant as I could ever have wanted. You were SO damned wasted down in that morgue…"

"Why, shucks, ma'am…"

"Shut up and tell Xing-Li I said to loosen up a bit and enjoy herself," she laughed out loud. "And be good to her. She's a sweet girl."

"Yes, ma'am," Tyler agreed readily, dark eyes sparkling. "You won't have to worry about that at all."

Miss Parker watched him walk from her office with a slightly livelier step than the one he'd walked in with and smiled to herself. Tyler WAS a good man — she had yet to regret her decision to give him the position of her assistant. He'd lived up to the challenge she'd promised, and then some! All she needed now was for Jarod to get home and Broots and Sydney to heal enough, and she'd have a killer team on whom she could depend utterly.

Then she stretched again and reached for her briefcase. It was time, if she was going to talk to Sydney at all, for her to get going.

Sydney heard the front door shut softly. "Deb? Kevin? Would you please come back here?" he called out, wishing he had taken the time they both had been out of the house to disconnect himself from the therapy machine so that he could be more mobile. This was NOT a time to be constantly tied down to a couch in a back room.

Deb came through the den door first — and his heart dropped at the despondent look on her face. He put out a hand to her. "Ma petite?"

She rushed at him and threw herself into his arms. "I don't think he believes me anymore when I tell him I love him, Grandpa — I can tell. Everything's gone wrong now — what am I going to do?"

Sydney hushed at her for a moment. "Let me talk to him," he said finally when Deb had stopped shaking. "I told you that I didn't think that he'd be ready to listen to you yet." He saw motion out of the corner of his eye and turned his head to see Kevin leaning against the doorjamb with a dejected look on his face. "Go on now. Let me talk to him. Go up to your room and clean up — don't make Kevin's mistake and stand at the door to eavesdrop."

Deb shot her grandfather a grateful look and then rose to leave, pausing by the door as if wanting to leave a kiss or caress but being prevented by the expression and attitude of the young man who then simply moved out of her way and into the den. She sniffed and continued on her way up to her bedroom where she knew all she'd do would be to sit on the edge of the bed and cry.

"You're being very hard on her," Sydney said in an even voice. "You should know better than to listen in on another person's therapy session — the things said between Deb and me aren't meant for anybody else to hear."

"She lied to me," Kevin shook his head as he sat down. "All she wanted was a man — not me."

"If that's what you want to believe, then you're going to do her an incredible amount of damage," Sydney snapped at him, bringing the blue eyes up in surprise. "Whatever her intentions when she put things into motion, the end result is that she's very much in love with you NOW. But if your ego can't take knowing that it might not have been all about your charming wit and personality at the very first, then your rejection of her will be disastrous to you both."

"But…" Damn it, Kevin thought to himself, here he was, confused about Deb again. "I don't understand her at all…"

"Kevin, when it comes to love, sometimes it just doesn't pay to try to understand women." Sydney shook his head ruefully. "Men have been puzzling over the minds and hearts of women for eons — and we still can't get it quite right. The best thing you can do right now is stop trying to understand and let your heart feel which way is right," Sydney told him earnestly. "That girl has given herself to you literally and figuratively — her body as well as her heart. Don't destroy her with your doubts and insecurities."

Kevin looked back over his mentor's shoulder at the den door — and the path it would take for him to find her upstairs. "She loves me?" he asked, refocusing on his mentor. "You're sure?"

"As sure as I am that you're very much in love with her," Sydney answered truthfully. "And as much as I regret that my granddaughter didn't wait until she was married before she became intimate with a man, I have to work with what the situation is now — and so do you. You need to do is go up to her and apologize for being an self-absorbed ass before she works herself into the kind of depression that can seriously hurt her."

The blue eyes blinked and stared at him for the blunt criticism he'd just delivered in such a even tone. "You think I'm being an ass?"

"Out of ignorance, I'll admit, but yes you are." Sydney's gaze was both accusing and sympathetic. "You have forgotten that she's as confused and befuddled about this whole thing as you are — and she's very vulnerable right now. She has given to you freely what that man in California would have taken by force — and now she's afraid that you'll throw it back at her as worthless simply because you heard something you weren't supposed to. Her sense of self-worth is very fragile, and that will destroy it completely."

Kevin glanced at the door again. Despite everything, he didn't want to hurt her. He still did love her, even if he was having trouble understanding her.

"It comes down to this," Sydney continued insistently. "Do you love her enough to forgive her whatever sin you think she committed by having something else on her mind when she first began to make love to you?" He watched Kevin think hard. "If you can forgive her, then get up there and make things right with her before they go completely wrong. But if you can't, then you'll disappoint me more than any other person I've ever met has by turning out to be nothing more than another heartless Centre-created automaton."

Kevin was shocked. "I'm not an automaton," he complained softly. "I'm not."

"Then prove it," was the quiet and insistent retort. "Forgive her and fix things between you."

The chestnut eyes gazed expectantly into Kevin's blues, waiting to see what he felt that he was capable of. Kevin shot another glance at the door and then rose and started to move toward it. "Kevin?" The young Pretender turned and looked down. "You both are going to need reassurance from the other about your love for each other now. Deb threatened yours when you heard her talking to me — you've threatened hers now when you couldn't accept what you heard and turned cold. Do yourself and her a favor — don't go for the quick fix. Take your time and do whatever it takes to make it right again — do you understand?" Sydney looked into his eyes urgently. "Do WHATEVER it takes — however long it takes to accomplish that."

Kevin nodded and walked through the house and up the stairs. He paused in front of Deb's door and could hear the sound of muffled sobs from within. He knocked softly.

"Go away," her voice said, choking back another sob.

He pushed the door open and walked in anyway. Deb was facedown on the bed, hugging her pillow to her chest. She turned away from him immediately. "We need to talk," he said quietly, getting a sense of dejá-vu.

"What is there to say?" she replied bitterly and brokenly, only heightening the sense of repeating a scene out of his life. "You don't trust me, you don't believe me…"

He came over and sat down on the bed next to her. "Sydney thinks I'm behaving like an ass," he told her bluntly. "And maybe I am. I don't know. I DON'T know about love. The only thing I know for sure is that I'm miserable now thinking that everything that we've had for the last day or so is gone. I don't want to lose it — or lose you."

She rolled slightly so that she could look at him. "But you have already lost it, Kevin. You won't trust me or believe me when I tell you I love you." She started shaking her head hard when he opened his mouth to complain. "Don't bother denying it — I could feel the difference when you held me." Her tears hadn't stopped. "It's all ruined now."

"I'm sorry," Kevin said, genuinely contrite — he was fully aware that she was doing to him exactly what he'd done to her, and knew he deserved it. "I shouldn't have gotten so upset at what you told Sydney. In the first place, I wasn't supposed to listen in, and in the second, it doesn't make any difference if we love each other NOW, does it?"

"But DO you love me — really?" she demanded, a sob making her voice catch. "If you can distrust me and turn so cold over so little, how can I be sure that you really do love me?"

"The same way that I can find out whether you really love me or not," he told her and captured her attention. "We've both done and said things today that have hurt each other. We're going to have to let them go — and move past them. It was Sydney that finally explained it to me — that no matter what you were thinking before, NOW you are in love with me." He looked down. "Or, at least, that's what he believes. And no matter what I did out at the park, I do love you now — very much. He believes me too." He looked back into her eyes intently. "We're going to have to trust each other a little bit — and then go out of our way to prove that our mutual trust isn't misplaced, that we DO love each other as much as we say."

"What do you mean?" Her blue eyes were wide and vulnerable.

He finally putting a gentle hand on her back. "I'm asking for a chance to prove to you that I love you and believe in you again."

"So what now — you want a little roll in the hay, and think that sex going to solve all our problems this time, is it?" she asked him bitterly, holding onto her pillow like a shield between them.

"I have no intention of going out and rolling around on cut and dried grass," Kevin told her with a confused frown and then grew serious again. "And this has nothing to do with sex. I'm saying that we stop trying to hurt one another and just let ourselves be who we were before this whole stupid misunderstanding began — back when we believed in each other."

"But we don't anymore…" she complained softly. "Believe in each other anymore, I mean."

"But I want to believe in you very much, and I'm willing to give you the chance to show me that I can," he replied, smoothing his hand in a circle on her back. "The question is whether or not you want to believe in me anymore, and whether you're willing to give me a chance too."

She sat up, the pillow she'd been holding dropping to her lap and no longer making a barrier between them. "It isn't a case of want — I need to believe in you, Kevin," she told him sadly, "but more than that, I need you to believe in ME. I'm nothing if you don't love me anymore. I don't think I can live without that anymore."

"Then that's where we start," he said softly and reached for her. This time when he gathered her to him, it was gently and with all the love that he couldn't help but feel for her — and she rested against him, relieved to be back in his arms again and began weeping. "What did we do wrong to screw this up so quickly and so badly?" she asked sadly.

"I don't know," he answered honestly. "But I swear to you that I don't ever want it to happen again." He wrapped his arms around her and scooted onto the bed just a bit further so he could lean back against the headboard with her comfortably against him, and she wrapped her arms around his waist tightly.

"I don't either," she replied sadly.

This time, as Kevin held her, Deb could feel that he wasn't holding anything back — and the relief she felt at that kept the tears flowing for a long time. That he had come back to her and insisted on working through the misunderstanding to get back to this point was what she had needed to know that he did still love her — to know that repairing that which had been damaged was possible. And as he held her, Kevin very deliberately turned his mind away from that shard of painful doubt after stomping on it. To have her back in his arms, and to know that just the thought of his rejecting her would distress her so much was all the proof he needed right now that she did indeed love him very much. Sydney was right. How she got to this point was irrelevant — THIS was what was important now.

So this was what love was REALLY like, he thought ruefully, cradling Deb and rocking her gently to soothe her. It was nothing like the storybooks or movies made it out to be — it wasn't something to be taken for granted. It didn't just happen and then remain a permanent fixture in a life. It would take work and vigilance and mutual effort to nurture it as time went on — and there would be times when that work would be difficult and painful.

No wonder Sydney had warned him against taking this step before he was ready, and no wonder Sydney had been upset when he hadn't listened — when neither of them had listened. This simple misunderstanding — so easily sparked, so painfully resolved — was a warning to them both.

This wasn't going to be easy after all.

Feedback, please:


	20. Evening Confidences

Resolutions – 20

Evening Confidences

by MMB

Jarod could almost feel the hesitancy and refusal building in Ginger as he pulled the car to a halt in front of the Child Protective Services office. When he turned off the engine and turned to her, he could see he was right – her face was pale and almost terrified, and she was backed into the corner of her seat. "Daddy, no…" she whimpered.

"Listen to me, Sprite. We're just stopping by here for a visit, as a favor to someone who helped us convince the judge to let you be my little girl for real. Do you remember Mr. Rizzo – he came to visit us that day, with the lady that gave you the bad time?" Ginger nodded warily. "Well, he asked if, after we saw the judge and had the adoption finalized, we could stop by here – evidently there were some people who were very concerned about you that wanted to know that you're OK." He ran the back of his fingers across her cheek. "We can be nice to a couple of people who care about you, can't we?"

"Me not 'tay here no more?" she needed to know.

"You're MY daughter for real now," Jarod consoled her. "The only place you'll stay from now on is with ME. Once we're done here, we're going home."

"OK," she finally agreed only very reluctantly and then waited for him to open the car door and let her out of the vehicle. She put up her hand and clung to his tightly, as if afraid that once inside someone would try to rip her away from him again.

Jarod let his grip tighten about his daughter's small fingers a little to give her the reassurance she needed and then led her slowly into the building. He pushed through the doors of the office and then looked around for Rizzo, and then waved at the man as he began to lead Ginger to his desk.

"There you are!" Rizzo smiled at Jarod and then smiled down at Ginger even more widely. "So you have yourself a real Daddy again. Are you happy?"

Ginger looked up at him with wide and wary eyes and then nodded slowly as her fingers tightened around her father's.

"Have a seat here, and I'll go get the ladies I was telling you about," Rizzo told Jarod and gestured at the chair immediately next to his desk. "I'll be right back."

Jarod sat down and pulled Ginger up into his lap. "Do you know," he told her quietly, in a voice obviously meant for her and her alone, "that I love you very much?"

"I lub you too, Daddy. We go now?"

"Mr. Rizzo wants to bring those people I was telling you about. We'll wait around here for a little bit."

Ginger leaned in against Jarod and huddled tightly against him. "Me no like it here."

"I know, Sprite – we won't be staying long." He folded his arms around her and held onto her tightly. "You don't have to be afraid anymore, sweetheart," he told her softly. "You belong to me now, and nobody's ever going to take you away from me again." He dropped a gentle kiss onto the top of her head between the butterfly clips.

"Here we are," Rizzo's voice sounded from behind the seated pair and then moved to sit at the desk. "This is Sally Miller," he indicated a young red-headed woman dressed smartly in a blue pantsuit, "and Cheryl Linden," he gestured at a middle-aged woman with salt and pepper hair in tight curls all over her head and a lime-green shirtdress.

Jarod nodded his greetings, but he could see that both women weren't paying him the least bit of attention – their eyes were all for the little girl on his lap.

Cheryl Linden crouched down next to the seated pair. "Do you remember me, sweetie?" she asked gently. "I sure remember you…"

Ginger's head shook after a slight pause, and then she looked again. Very vaguely she could remember being carried by someone with dark and grey hair after the police had pulled out from under the bed at the screaming woman's house. That person had tried very hard to comfort her. Was this that woman? She leaned her head into her father's chest again.

"We were the intake team that removed your daughter from the Thatcher house," Sally Miller explained patiently to Jarod. "I'd never seen such a traumatized child in all my time here. She wouldn't move, wouldn't speak, wouldn't cry, wouldn't hardly respond to anything anybody did or said, was either as stiff as a board or flinching as if we were getting ready to beat her the moment we tried to touch her." Her green eyes caught at the Pretender's dark gaze. "I know you work with children, Dr. Russell, so maybe you know sometimes how one specific child just… bothers you… more than all the others?"

"I know exactly what you mean," Jarod answered honestly. It was such a feeling that had led him to initially consider taking a parental role in Ginger's life to begin with.

"Well, this little one was the topic of many a conversation between Cheryl and myself," Sally continued. "We started to feel a little better when Rizzo came back and told us that you were taking such good care of her, and that she was beginning to act like a kid again a little bit. Then he told us you were getting ready to move away. Call us selfish a little, but we wanted to see for ourselves that she was in good hands."

"Do you hear that, Sprite?" Jarod bent to his daughter. "They were worried about you and wanted to make sure that I was taking good care of you. What do you say to that?"

Ginger looked steadily into both of the strange faces ahead of her. They cared? They wanted to make sure she was OK? Why had she never known that such people existed before this? "Thank-oo," she replied softly, then clutched at her father's shirt again.

Cheryl reached out a gentle hand and touched Ginger's face very softly, and then gave her a kiss on the forehead as she rose to her feet again. "You're very welcome, Ginger. I'm glad your new father brought you by," she told the child. "Because now I know you're OK, and I don't have to worry about you anymore. You have yourself a GOOD life now, little one." She nodded her thanks to Jarod.

"Thanks for bringing her by, Dr. Russell," Rizzo added his gratitude to that of his colleagues. "Every once in a while, it does us all good to see that everything CAN work out well in the end – it keeps us able to continue to fight for those who don't have anybody to advocate for them."

"Thank YOU," Jarod responded. "There for a moment, when I first took custody of her, I was afraid that nobody cared whether she lived or died. I needed to see that she had actually touched somebody's heart here." He looked down into the little face pressed against his shirt. "But I think I need to get someone here home. It's been a big and a little frightening day – and I think we both could use some quiet time."

"Thanks for coming," Cheryl told the tall Pretender as he put the little girl down from his lap and rose with her hand tightly in his. "Good luck."

"Good luck to you – and keep up the good work." Jarod looked down at Ginger. "You ready to go home?" At her vehement nod, he smiled. "Then let's get going."

Ikeda pulled his car to the curb just in front of Joe's and then waved as the sweeper started his engine and pulled out to head back to the Centre. That the big sweeper was behaving normally again must mean that Green-san had returned from the Centre medical facilities relatively sound. That was good news – Parker-sama would be much relieved. He walked quickly up the walk and pushed through the unlocked front door and looked around the slightly dark interior of the house.

All was unusually silent – there was no superficial chatter from the family as they got up from their dinner table as had been the norm for a while now. His ebony eyes darkening and narrowing in sudden alertness, he walked silently through the house to the kitchen. There he found Green-san sitting at the table, head in his hands, nursing a tall glass of some sort of beverage. "Green-san," he bowed deeply. "Is everything alright? Where are Kevin-san and Deborah-san?"

Sydney raised his head and acknowledged the bodyguard. "Upstairs," he answered in a tired tone. "They didn't come down for supper – but then, I'm not surprised." He gazed up into the Japanese man's face with an assessing look. "Did you know about them — that they had…?"

"Did I know that they had formed a closer, more intimate, relationship?" Ikeda asked delicately. Sydney snorted at the diplomatic way of phrasing the situation and nodded. "Yes. I knew."

"And you said nothing to them?"

"Green-san, it wasn't my place to interfere in something that private between those two," he told the old psychiatrist honestly and bluntly. "But to be honest, I completely approve of what happened."

"You approve?" Sydney's gaze turned startled and he gestured to a chair, indicating his wish that the ninja take a seat.

"Very much," Ikeda replied calmly, moving into the indicated seat with a smooth and practiced move. "Deborah-san needs a protector like Kevin-san after her bad experience in California – someone who will take care of her and show her that not everyone in the world is out to hurt her. Someone who will hold her in the night, keeping her safe from the demons in her sleep and loving her whenever she needs a man's touch."

"And now Kevin is in her nightmares," Sydney told him with a shake of the head. "This doesn't help her very much…"

"Yes, but he is in her bed as well," Ikeda insisted. "With Kevin-san at her side far more often than the nightmare is, it will eventually give her reason to stop having nightmares in the first place."

"But Kevin isn't ready for this intense a relationship," Sydney said, bringing out his second worry. "I'm sure you've noticed by now that my nephew is far more naïve than normal – he barely knows what a girl looks like, much less…"

"This may be true," Ikeda answered easily, "but your nephew cannot help but profit from this development as well. Deborah-san gives purpose to his life – a purpose that he himself has assigned to it as opposed to one forced upon him by others – and in this way, he will mature faster in the ways of the world by necessity. Besides, this is something he is doing as much for himself as for her – although neither of them would ever be able to see that deeply into their motivations to understand that. He needs someone to take care of, someone with whom he can take the role of leader rather than subordinate, someone who will continue to need him in other ways when you have recovered your health and the boxes in the living room are gone."

"It's still too soon for both of them," Sydney complained.

"It was their Karma to come together this way," Ikeda answered gently, "just as it was your Karma to be removed as a psychological barrier to their love being consummated when the time came and it needed to happen."

"Karma," Sydney repeated bitterly. "I don't know that I can believe in that anymore than I can believe in God. Both seem just too pat an excuse for painful twists and turns that Life takes all on its own."

Ikeda shook his head. "Green-san, surely you had noticed the way these two have been looking at each other ever since I began to watch over your household in the night?" Knowing ebony pinned Sydney's chestnut gaze where it sat. "I cannot believe that you did not see this coming eventually — known that it was inevitable..."

"I saw it coming," Sydney admitted, "but I was hoping to postpone it…"

"So what are you going to do now?" Ikeda asked quietly, "If I may be so bold as to inquire – are you going to forbid their love?"

"And drive them both away? I don't think so," Sydney shook his head firmly. "I have accepted that this is the way they want to live their lives – but…"

The Japanese gazed long and hard at the man he was guarding for Parker-sama. "I think, perhaps, there is a lesson in this for you as well, Green-san," he said finally.

The chestnut came up to meet his ebony gaze in surprise again. "For me?"

"Indeed," the ninja nodded. "You have forgotten how to trust Life to follow the path that leads where it will lead with or without your assistance. You help others to discover that trust, I have heard you do this often for both Kevin-san and Deb-san since I have known you all, but you do not have that trust yourself. What happened to steal your trust? Do you know?"

Unbidden, a sudden vision of the main gate at Dachau – with 'Arbeit Macht Mann Frei' Work Makes Man Free in iron letters over the portal – filled his mind and made him shudder as if chilled. "I learned a long time ago that Life cannot be trusted," Sydney replied brusquely and shook his head. "When a person trusts Life, they make themselves vulnerable – sometimes too much so."

"And in your life-long struggle against the inevitable, has this distrust of Life and the vulnerability it brings ever done anything except pain you in the long run anyway?" Ikeda asked bluntly. His words had the desired effect, for Green-san looked back up at him, startled. But instead of saying more, he merely rose. "It is time that I check the perimeter of the property now. Please excuse me." He bowed deeply again and walked to the arcadia doors and let himself out into the back yard, leaving Sydney staring into his beverage glass and trying to answer the question put to him by the inscrutable and strangely wise ninja.

Crystal stared into her little closet in amazement. The money that Miss Parker had given her, money that she had spent so very carefully, had provided her with a bigger wardrobe than she'd had in a very long time. She had convinced the sweeper entrusted with taking her 'where she needed to go' to make the trip into Dover – to a discount clothing store where a dollar went further than it would have in the small shop in Blue Cove. She now had several pairs of dress trousers as well as a number of shell blouses and a couple of shirt-jackets that matched the color of the trousers.

Most of the rest of the money had been spent at a supermarket for enough fresh fruit, vegetables, bread, milk and other supplies that she knew she'd not be hungry for at least a week. She had even bought herself a tiny purse to hold the apartment key and the few bills that were still left after all her purchases had been made. Maybe after a while, she would find a small wallet in which she could put the money she had earned at her job.

She sagged to the bed, tired and still not quite believing everything that had gone on over the last two days. This was her HOME – this, and not a cold and drafty warehouse at the edge of the water. Across the narrow landing lived that pretty Chinese woman who had summoned her this morning, and below the Chinese lady lived the woman who had driven the car – some sort of scientist, she'd finally figured out. She was surrounded with people living their own lives and making room for her to live hers without demanding that she move out of the way for them, or hitting her when she didn't move fast enough or said something wrong.

She reached back a hand, pulled her long, dark braid over her shoulder to the front, removed the rubber band that had kept it neat and tidy and out of her way, and ran her fingers through her hair until it was loose. Slowly she got to her feet and headed for the bathroom and the hairbrush that had been provided, running it through the silken length and letting herself enjoy the feel of clean and well-groomed hair at last. She'd not had either the time or the mood to enjoy it that morning – and it had been a long time since she'd been that clean for that long.

Crystal turned on the light and stared at her reflection in the mirror. She still looked like shit, she decided. The bruise on her cheek had turned an ugly shade of green now, with the swollen eye purple-black shot through with patches of sallow yellow. She touched the eye carefully – it still hurt a great deal – and then turned off the bathroom light. She would just have to live with the non-too-subtle looks of derision and the questioning stares that her condition would earn her from her coworkers tomorrow – people she had never met and who wouldn't know her.

She wasn't hungry. The sweeper who had chauffeured her around had treated her to fast food on the way back to the Centre grounds from Dover. She had eaten very slowly in order to fully appreciate the taste of food that was fresh and hadn't spent any time in a trash container before finding its way to her. Sam and his fiancée had watched her virtually inhale her meal the night before, she'd been so hungry for a substantial and truly filling meal. Tonight, with hunger only a very vague hint at the back of her mind, she'd been able to do her smaller dinner justice. She would have to watch what she ate — while she could stand to put a little more meat on her bones, she didn't want to gain too much weight.

She rose and walked from the bedroom and into the little living room. With the time to spend on the task, she finally began to study her new living environment more closely. There was a small boom box on the top of the bookcase near the door, and she turned the device on and tuned in a radio station with some smooth jazz music that was gentle on the nerves. Beneath the boom box, laying flat on the bookcase shelves, were several magazines in English, along with a selection of books in what looked like Chinese. Crystal ran her fingers along the spines of the Chinese books and decided that she'd ask her neighbor if she'd like to have them – they wouldn't do HER any good.

The lack of urgency in her environment, the idea that she wasn't doing anything that anybody would disapprove of or punish her for or that she needed to remain on guard for, made her feel vaguely uncomfortable. She had been so at odds with the rest of the world for so long that having a quiet, comfortable, warm and safe evening in her own home was a completely foreign concept. She felt a flash of a wish that she could tell this to Sydney – the one person she COULD talk to. Maybe he could help her understand why something so good felt so wrong.

With a sigh she turned the boom box off and, after locking and securing her front door, turned off the light in the living room and headed back to the bedroom. It had been a big day for her – she was tired – and tomorrow promised to be equally challenging in other ways. The surgical scrub garments she'd been given had found their place under the pillow of her bed, and she pulled them out now and changed into them. She folded the jeans and tee shirt neatly and stored them in mostly empty drawers of the small chest of drawers before drawing on the soft green cotton garments.

She pulled back the blankets and sheet and slipped into bed, pulling the covers up over her body and tucking them about her tightly. This is what it felt like to BE home, she reminded herself. This was HER home.

Maybe someday she'd be used to it – but not today. She closed her eyes and hoped that sleep would come quickly.

"Syd?" Miss Parker pushed the unlocked front door open and walked into the dimly lit house. "Are you still up?" A slight motion in the living room caught her eye, and she saw Mr. Ikeda slowly sinking back into a relaxed sitting position on the floor. She nodded at him silently, commending his vigilance.

"Back here, Parker," came the gently accented voice from the direction of the kitchen.

She followed the voice and then raised her eyebrows when she noted that he was sitting in the kitchen all by himself. "Where's Kevin and Deb?" she asked as she slipped into the chair right next to him.

"Upstairs," he answered truthfully. He looked at her with an expression of tired acceptance. Maybe she'd be able to help him figure out how to tell Broots… "You might as well hear it from me now as later — it seems that while I was… indisposed… they took matters between them into their own hands and…"

"Oh God!" Miss Parker breathed. "You're kidding!"

He shook his head and looked at her as evenly as he could. "We both knew it was only going to be a matter of time…"

"Yeah, but…" she complained, and then gazed at him questioningly. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing," he said with finality, adding when he saw her eyebrows soar toward the hairline, "except try to figure out a way to tell Broots when the time comes."

She stared at him. "You mean to tell me that after years of Grandpa Sydney having a hissy fit every time a young man even LOOKED at her in a calculating way, you're going to sit here quietly and accepting while they are upstairs in a bedroom…"

"They love each other, Parker – and I honestly don't think this is just a case of rampant hormones. I saw a look in Kevin's eyes tonight…" He gazed at his surrogate daughter fondly. "It reminded me of Jarod, talking about you not all that long ago."

Her gaze softened immediately. "Are you telling me that when a Pretender falls in love, it's a forever thing?"

He shrugged in a very continental manner. "It's entirely possible. We both know that Jarod was yours back when you were children – that it just took you two a helluva long time to put it together properly at last." He shrugged again. "As far as Kevin and Deb are concerned, however, I wasn't happy about what they did – I chewed on both of them as soon as I found out – but what CAN I do at this late date?"

"You could tell them to stay the hell in their own bedrooms," she suggested sharply.

His answering gaze was quite skeptical. "Do you honestly think that would work?" he asked dryly. "Would YOU have listened to me when you were that age?

She sighed. "No, I suppose not." She looked around. "So they're upstairs together now?"

He nodded. "They've already managed to have a fairly serious misunderstanding," he told her, "and I sent Kevin upstairs to be with Deb and make things right with her. I hope to high heaven he'd figured out how to manage that." He shook his head in dismay. "I know that neither one of them was ready for this relationship to get this complicated – but they are even less ready to have the relationship implode or be damaged very badly. So I've got to play match-maker to a certain extent, and help them mend fences they themselves first put up and then botched."

"No wonder you look so beaten," Miss Parker commented gently. "You look all in."

"I also had a rather troubling discussion with Mr. Ikeda just before you got here." He then blinked and looked up at her. "Wait a minute — what are YOU doing here at this hour? Shouldn't you be home with Davy?"

"I wanted to check up on you, since I couldn't be the one to take you home from your latest foray into medical science," she smiled at him. "And I wanted us to talk for a while."

"Parker… I'm really not…"

"You should know that there's no way I'm going to let what happened the other night go, Sydney," she told him frankly. "I told you, I want in. It's time you started to talk to me."

The chestnut eyes flicked up into hers tiredly and then looked back down again. "You don't know what you're asking of me," he told her sourly.

"You're right," she admitted, "I don't. But you need to talk to me, and you know it." She reached out to him and grabbed his nearest hand. "If the tables were turned, you wouldn't let me get away with that as an excuse, and you know it. You need to air some of that stuff, Syd — put it out in the open where you can look at it more objectively…"

"There's nothing objective about it, Parker," he burst out. "I lost my whole family — I watched them take my father and mother and little sister away for a 'shower' that I later found out was really an execution. I saw…" His face crumpled, and he buried his face in his hands. "God, Parker, don't make me remember — please…"

"What did you see, Sydney?" she asked gently, scooting her chair closer to his and putting her arm around him. "I know it hurts, but the time has come to let this go. Tell me, so I can help you."

Sydney seemed to gulp air in an attempt to calm himself. "I saw…" he began before his face crumpled again. "I saw the nude body of my little sister in a cart being hauled over to the ovens. They had just thrown her into this tangle of legs and arms — her face was… I think she'd died screaming… Her eyes were open, staring at me, blaming me for not helping her…"

"God, Syd," Parker breathed in shock and dismay and then pulled his head toward her shoulder. "I had no idea…" He was trembling now, trying to keep from sobbing openly. "It's OK," she soothed at him, holding him as close as she could and letting him rest against her. "You can cry for her now, you can grieve…"

He shook his head, starting slowly and subtlely and then more and more violently. "But I can't! Jacob saw her too and started to cry, but one of the SS came over and slammed the but of his rifle into his face, yelling at us that we weren't to cry — that we'd been…" Sydney's voice was shaking badly, and his accent was growing thicker as his distress grew. "…that we'd been 'liberated' from the prison of family ties…" He gasped as if in pain. "Mon Dieu! Yvette!"

Tears ran down Miss Parker's cheeks at the agonized tone. "Let go, Syd. Let go. You're not in Dachau anymore, and it's safe to cry now." She sheltered him as carefully as possible against her shoulder, one arm about his shoulders and the other hand cradling his head against her. "It's long past time you cried for them." His very body shook as he struggled against the overwhelming grief that was bubbling up from the bottom of his soul —a grief that had been locked away for so long that there was no stopping it now that it had found an outlet. "Let go, Sydney. It's OK. I'm here — I have you — it's safe. Let go…"

If Miss Parker had thought that Sydney's tears many years earlier over his brother's impending death had been hard and painful, she knew the tears he finally began to shed now over a little sister long dead must have been agonizing. His arm went around her finally and clutched her close, hanging onto her as if in fear that she'd leave him while he ground out ripping, tearing sobs of grief too long denied. A shadow moved in the doorway to the front of the house, and she shook her head very slightly at the ninja coming to make sure that everything was still safe and secure, telling him with just a tweak of the head to leave them alone. Ikeda backed away from the doorway cautiously, leaving Parker-sama to deal with her foster-father's pain.

Miss Parker held him close and let him sob into her shoulder, moving her hand in small circles against his back at his shoulders every once in a while in an effort to comfort him with tears of her own running unimpeded down her face. It took a long time for him to release all the grief for his sister that he'd kept hidden away from himself and the rest of the world; and when he finally heaved a heavy sigh at the end of his emotional venting, he was completely exhausted. He leaned against her shoulder for a long moment, needing her support desperately and silently working up the energy to just sit up straight again. "I'm sorry," he said finally in a voice he forced into calm steadiness — but only barely.

"There's nothing to be sorry for," she shook her head at him as she finally loosened her hold on him and wiped away the tear tracks from where her tears had joined his. "I think you've needed the space to do that for a very long time." She watched him closely. "But now I think I need you to do one more thing for me." Exhausted chestnut eyes looked up at her — he had no energy left with which to protest. "Tell me about Yvette — about before the war. What was she like?"

The pale face broke into an exhausted smile. "She was so lively — such a tease. She was constantly getting us in trouble by accusing the wrong one of us for picking on her back, always underfoot but making us laugh. She loved to sing…" He straightened a little further and began working on wiping away his own tears with the palms of his hands. "She was such a happy child…"

"What did she look like?" Miss Parker wanted to know.

"She had long, dark hair that our mother used to keep pulled behind her in a ribbon; big, brown eyes that always seemed to be either wide with wonder or sparkling with mischief." He looked at her, and she could tell that he was looking both at her and at his memory of his little sister. "She was beautiful — you reminded me of her a little when you were very young..."

"She was much younger than you?"

He nodded. "By four years," he told her. He stared for a long time at her; and as he did, his eyes filled again. "God, I haven't thought about her, remembered her or her voice, for… since…"

"You need to remember her alive, Sydney," Miss Parker told him gently. "Let go of the bad and reclaim the good memories of your little sister. She sounds like a sweet child that didn't deserve to be locked away at the bottom of your mind with all that ugliness for all this time." She smoothed back some of the grey hair. "I didn't even know you had a sister — thank you for sharing Yvette with me." The depleted expression in his eyes didn't escape her. "But now you need to rest and recover from your day — and from what I just put you through. I didn't mean to wear you out so."

"I'm beat," he admitted with very little strength, "but…" He gave her a tired smile. "I think I feel better for just having remembered her playing and laughing again." He put up a hand to Miss Parker's face. "You've given her back to me. What a gift!"

"Psht! I only sat here and listened," she told him gently and kissed his cheek, "while you did all the hard work. I'll sit and listen to you anytime you want to talk — and we WILL be doing this again, you know — but for now, let me get your crutches. I'll help you get settled in bed before I leave."

He took the polished wooden crutches from her when she handed them to him, and Miss Parker trailed him into the den to help him remove his slip-on shoes and get arranged more comfortably on the daybed. "By the way, I talked to Jarod today — and he wanted me to be sure to warn you," she suddenly remembered to tell him as she helped him get his legs up and comfortable again, "his mother will be coming back to Delaware with him when he comes home."

Sydney's brows slid together. "She is? You're kidding — why?"

"To meet and talk to you, I gather," Miss Parker told him with a shrug. She then tugged on his covers to help him. "I believe Jarod told me that she told him that she 'wanted to meet the man who raised her son.' I wouldn't worry about it too much — Jarod said that he'd be filling her in on how you've had it rough for a while, so hopefully she'll not be too hard on you in the process."

"I stole her son's life," he said calmly and with deep resignation. "Whatever happens, I will have deserved it."

"You stop that right now!" Miss Parker told him firmly. "I'm not going to let her come over here and tear you apart — and we both know why you did what you did. Margaret and I get along fairly well now — I'll make damned sure she treats you with the respect you deserve, or I'll know the reason why." She bent and kissed his forehead. "Get some sleep now, Sydney. You've earned it today."

He looked up into her grey eyes with undisguised fondness. "You know, I could never have asked for a better daughter," he told her with a gentle smile. "Tell Davy I said hello — and get some rest yourself. You've earned it too."

"Goodnight, Syd," she said, rising. "Sleep well now."

"Goodnight, Parker."

She walked back through the house, turning off any remaining lights and then locking the front door behind herself. Yvette, she thought to herself. Sydney had had a little sister named Yvette. Long, dark hair… A picture of Ginger snapped into her mind. She hoped that the little girl had continued to improve since she'd last seen her — because she had a feeling that a grieving old man might just find some comfort in maybe seeing a little sister reborn in a adopted granddaughter.

Hurry home, Jarod, she thought as she climbed behind the wheel of her car and turned the key. We need you here — both you AND Ginger.

Deb awoke with a violent shudder, and Kevin's arm tightened around her almost immediately. "Another nightmare?" he mumbled sleepily, shifting uncomfortably against the headboard behind him.

She nodded and huddled against him again. She didn't want to tell him that this nightmare had had little to do with California, and everything to do with the argument they had had that day. She had awakened as the dream-Kevin had started walking away from her without even a backward glance, awakened as her dream-self had tipped her head back and screamed in despair.

"Was it the same one again?" he asked, waking up a little more. She wasn't fighting with him this time, trying to escape. "Was it the one you were telling Sydney about?"

She shook her head. "Just hold me," she whimpered and tightened her hold on him.

"I'm here," he soothed, kissing the top of her head and soothing her with his hands. "It's OK." He paused, then suggested carefully, "Tell me about your dream."

Then again, maybe he needed to hear about her nightmares — maybe sharing what her dreams were telling her would help him understand. "I dreamed we had a horrible fight," she told him softly, "and that you got so angry with me that you walked away. You were leaving."

"I'm not leaving," he reminded her. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm so afraid," she whispered into his tee shirt.

"Of what?" he asked, astounded.

"That you WILL leave — that I'll say something that sets you off again, and…"

"I wouldn't do that…"

"You almost did," she reminded him softly.

Kevin slid down the headboard and pulled her along with him until they were both lying against the pillows. "I'm so sorry," he apologized with deep remorse. "I didn't mean to hurt you so."

"I'm sorry too," she replied. "I know I must have sounded awfully callous when I was talking to Grandpa…"

"And I knew better than to stand around and listen," he chastised himself mentally. "I was told that he wanted to speak to you alone — I should have known better."

"Promise me you'll always talk to me first when you're angry," she insisted. "Give me a chance to explain…"

"I promise," he said, finding it a very easy agreement to make, and then ran his hand up to her face and then kissed her gently. "I love you, Deb."

"I love you," she said and kissed him back, this time with a little more fire. "Make love to me, Kevin," she whispered, her free hand sweeping up his chest and then down again. "Please. I need you — I need to know that we're OK..."

"Our being OK isn't going to be about sex, Deb," he said tenderly and kissed her cheek. "We're OK as we are right now — and we don't need to make love to make it more OK." He pulled his arms around her and held her very close. "Now, don't think that I don't want to make love with you — because I do. But making love isn't going to make us OK — I think I've finally figured that part of it out."

"I thought sex was a big part of it for you," she whispered, feeling confused.

"It still is — I still have a very hard time keeping my hands off of you," he replied, letting one hand begin a slow and provocative journey over her belly and under the hem of her tee shirt, seeking warm and soft skin. "And I fully intend to make love to you in a little bit — in case you were wondering." He heard her sigh in contentment. "But our being OK together will have more to do with our loving and believing in each other than it does with whether or not we make love every night."

"It's just that when you're making love to me, I know that you believe in me," she told him. "If you didn't, I don't think you'd touch me — or your touch would be cold, like it was this afternoon. You would be rough — like HE was."

His wandering hand found a mound of soft flesh protected by lace and then toyed with the small bud of hardness that pushed insistently through it. In response, her hand began a journey of its own, finding and managing to undo the buckle to his belt and loosening his clothing. "Is my touch still cold?" he asked as his lips toyed with hers again and his hand followed the lacy elastic to the back and struggled with the hooks.

"Oh, no!" she sighed as the bra suddenly gave way, and Kevin was able to move it aside and fold his hand over her breast possessively. His thumb stroked the stiff little bud and made her arch into him in response. Her hand made its entrance into his jeans, pushing its way through now-open zippers and the folds of soft cotton boxers to close around him in an equally possessive manner. "Is mine?"

He groaned heavily in response, rolled her back over into her pillow and captured her lips with his in a blistering kiss as his hand abandoned its post and journeyed southward as well, unzipping her pants and slipping beneath jeans and silk in search of where she was most sensitive. When the kiss finally ended, she breathed heavily into his ear, "Make love to me, Kevin. I want you — now."

Reaching to help her pull her tee shirt and bra away from her body, Kevin smiled. "Yes, ma'am! It would be my pleasure," he commented softly as the shirt hit the floor and his hands began pulling at her jeans.

"Mine too," she giggled back at him, her hands pushing his jeans and boxers down over his hips and pulling up on his tee shirt too.

Kevin sat up and quickly divested himself of his clothing. "I sincerely hope so," he chuckled back at her and then rolled with Deb until he was lying on his back with her straddling his hips, their bodies having already united with a swift motion that made both of them gasp in surprise and pleasure. He sighed at the sensation of being surrounded by her and was unable to keep from beginning to move his hips.

Deb bent forward and kissed him on the lips and then on the cheeks and throat. She felt complete and safe at last with Kevin's hands and lips on her, touching her, caressing her — and his body deep inside hers moving rhythmically in a way that would soon have her feeling as if she were flying again. Talking and knowing that things were settling between them was all well and good — but THIS was what she needed to know that all was right with her world again.

All the unhappiness of the afternoon dropped away like a stone as the two of them found comfort and passion — and then release — with the other.

Miss Parker rolled over and squinted at the illuminated hands on her alarm clock when the telephone on her nightstand began to jangle. It was two o'clock in the morning, and he'd managed to wake her up again — after all these years. She had a smile on her face as she reached for the receiver, but her voice had the familiar 'Ice Queen' bite to it when she answered, "What?"

"Now THAT'S the way I remember things," Jarod purred into her ear in a soft and low tone. "I've missed hearing you answer the phone like that at this hour…"

"I actually fell asleep waiting for your call, Wonder-boy," she complained with a soft laugh. "I got home a little late from Syd's and just put my head down for a minute…"

"Well, did he talk to you?" Jarod asked curiously, propping himself up on an elbow. He too was in bed, figuring that this would be as close as he'd get to pillow-talk until he got home on Saturday.

"Yes," she replied. "I had no idea that he had…"

"Wait a moment, Missy," Jarod interrupted her. "Right now, you're acting as a counselor — and he's confiding in you. You cannot break that confidence. Perhaps, once I'm back and he's agreed to let me work with him, he'll give you permission to tell me what he told you tonight. But for now…"

"You're right," she admitted. "It's just that I've never seen him quite like this — it hurt me watching him hurt like that."

"Being a therapist isn't all light and flowers. A lot of it has to do with being able to keep what you hear from driving you into your own depression."

"I had him try to recall happy memories from before the war, to remember good things that he's kept locked away too. Is that right?"

Jarod nodded. "It's not a bad therapeutic technique — I've used it myself a few times. You must be remembering your psychology classes from your college days. What about later? Was he upset enough that you needed to give him anything to sleep?"

"I didn't tonight — I'll see whether Kevin or Deb tells me he was rested or exhausted when I talk to them tomorrow. Oh yeah, that reminds me. Syd tells me that's another little development…"

"Kevin and Deb?" Jarod picked up on her line of thought all too easily. "Ho boy," he said with a shake of the head.

"Yeah. Broots is going to shit a brick." She sighed. "Knowing Syd, he'll be the one to play martyr and tell him — probably the next time he goes in for physical therapy himself."

"You both saw this coming, didn't you?" he asked her gently. "Kevin is so much like me — and I saw his eyes when he saw Deb that first time. I could have told you that that was IT…"

"Forget about them," Miss Parker said and lay back into her pillow. "They have each other, and I'm stuck here very much by myself in this big bed. So… tell me about the rest of your day. How's Ginger on her first night officially as a Russell?"

Jarod chuckled. "Exhausted. I took her to the Aquarium after lunch, and we must have walked miles. But she has energy to burn — she wore ME out! She started drooping almost into her food tonight at supper, so we skipped bath time and I put her straight to bed." He lay back into his pillow too. "It's hard to believe, Missy — I have TWO children now."

"Jarod, WE have two children now," she corrected him gently. "I'm in on this little adventure too, aren't I?"

"Oh, I don't think I could do it without you," he agreed completely. "Tell me," he said, his voice dropping into that lower register that made her heart beat faster, "what are you wearing right now?"

Miss Parker sighed. She could almost feel his arms around her, holding her close the way she wanted him to so badly now. "You know that blue nightgown?"

"The one that I like the best?" His voice sounded pleased.

"Mmm-hmmm… What about you?"

"Just the bottoms of my pajamas, like always." He paused, his eyes closed as he tried to picture her laying in her father's bed in the townhouse. "I miss you — especially at this hour of the night."

"I know," she agreed wistfully. "But only one more night before…"

"I hope you have nothing planned for Sunday," he told her with a low chuckle. "I don't intend for either of us to get a WHOLE lot of sleep right away Saturday night. We'll need to sleep in…"

"If the kids will let us," she reminded him. "Remember that last night in California — they didn't sleep in one moment."

"Yeah, but Ginger will be working on a decent case of jet-lag. Davy will have a hard time getting her up much before nine in the morning."

"Davy's getting so excited about having his sister here with him that he can hardly stand it, you know," she chuckled. "We have plans on going to the store Saturday morning while you guys are in the air — and see if we can find some new decorations for Ginger's room. My stuff is pretty outdated now…"

"Have you figured out where we're going to put my mother up? In a guest room there at the townhouse?"

"I suppose that would be easiest," she replied. "If she were going to stay longer, I'd have her take over the summerhouse — Ikeda has taken the apartment above the garage as his place, so she'd never even know he was around, probably."

"She told me she's only staying a couple of weeks or so — if that long. Just long enough to see Ginger settled in and to…"

"Talk to Sydney, I know."

"I love you," he told her gently in that low and seductive voice. "I can't wait for Saturday to come so I can see you again."

"Promise me that you'll never leave me for so long again," she demanded urgently. "First you take off for eight whole years — and now for weeks at a time. I need you here with me, Jarod, not traipsing all over the planet…"

"I'm not leaving you again," he promised solemnly. "I put a ring on your finger that was my promise that I'd come back and then never leave you. To be honest, I'm ready to come home now but for one kid I need to see tomorrow and the tail end of my packing."

"Everything else is done?"

"Yup — just need to see that one boy, come home and get what little is left put away except for just what I'll need in the morning — and then go over and let Em fuss over us one more time tomorrow night. She'll be the one that will be missing Mom the most — even though Sammy starts school on Monday."

"Tell Em I send my love, will you?" Miss Parker asked, one arm over her eyes so she could picture him lying on his — their — bed in his beautiful home. "I hate to admit it, but I'm going to need to get some sleep pretty soon…"

"I know — I should let you go," he said, hating the distance and the need to part yet again. "But thanks for letting me know my beautiful huntress hasn't disappeared completely…"

"Oh, trust me, you'll find out just how much your huntress is definitely still around come Saturday night," she promised, with HER voice dipping into the low and seductive register. "We will definitely need to sleep in on Sunday morning."

"I look forward to it," he purred into her ear seductively, then sighed. "You know, I don't have a clue or a riddle to leave you with tonight, Parker, so I guess your ulcer's safe from me for a change."

"That's OK. That's one thing from our past conversations that I don't miss. Just leave me with a kiss and a promise to be home soon."

"I love you," he told her softly after her smooched at her through the phone. "I'll see you Saturday."

"I love you too," she replied, smooching back. "Call me tomorrow evening?"

"Will you be over at Sydney's again?"

"Probably."

"Then I'll call you around ten your time. Goodnight, Missy."

"Goodnight, Jarod."

Jarod hung up the telephone feeling the emptiness of the bed next to him. He rolled over and pulled the pillow that she'd slept on to his chest and held it tightly. For the first time in a very long time, he found it difficult to get to sleep.

Sydney rolled to his side and propped himself up on an elbow. Sleep had eluded him tonight — his mind was simply too full of memories of the past and concerns for the present. It was late — no doubt everyone else in the house except Mr. Ikeda was sound asleep. He grimaced and slipped his feet over the side of the couch and reached for one of the crutches. It was getting so that he only truly needed one of them to get around in the safety of his own house.

Walking slowly and rubbing his hand over his grizzled chin, he made his way to the kitchen for a glass of water. It was only after he'd stopped drawing water from the filtered spigot that he realized that he an audience — even the small noises he'd made had been enough to summon his nighttime bodyguard to check on what was going on. "Not much gets past you, does it?" he commented to the shadow in the kitchen doorway as he made his way to the table again in the dim light of the bulb over the sink.

"I think Parker-sama relies on my being alert during these quiet hours," the ninja replied quietly.

"Would you mind if I asked you a question?" Sydney gestured to the chair at the table where the Japanese man had sat before.

Ikeda tipped his head. Green-san had come back from his short escapade in a far more talkative mood lately — something that he had to admit was making the task of standing guard over the man both more enjoyable and more risky. Holding a conversation with the man he was supposed to be guarding meant that he had to give up one level of awareness and concentration regarding the environment around them — but at the moment, things didn't seem to be quite so urgent. He took his seat and folded his hands in front of him. "Ask," he replied.

"Do you have any regrets?"

The Japanese blinked. "About…"

"You were an assassin, correct?"

"Hai."

"You killed people without mercy and without question, correct?"

"Hai." The tone still hadn't wavered at all.

"Do you ever regret carrying out any of those assignments?"

Ikeda shook his head. "It wasn't my place to question the reasons of the Yakuza, Green-san. I did as I was told."

"And yet, eventually, you walked away from the Yakuza — and that's how you came to be in my house at the dead of night," Sydney pressed.

"Hai…" The ninja felt the first inkling of the direction Green-san wanted to go in this discussion and knew that it was toward the one place in his psyche that he felt vulnerable. The next question confirmed it.

"Why?"

Ikeda shifted nervously in his chair. "I… began to ask questions…"

"Why?" Sydney pressed, his need to know greater than his wish to be polite.

"As a ninja, I know that all life is sacred — taking a life is a solemn duty. Each death must further a greater good, or the karma involved can become unbearable for the ninja," he explained patiently. "However…" and his voice suddenly lost its firm conviction, "when the death itself becomes the agenda — when the deaths themselves become meaningless because there IS no greater good being served — then the ninja must begin to ask himself if he can live with the karma being created." The ebony eyes finally met and held Sydney's. "I decided that I could not do that any longer, and so I walked away." Strangely, the American's face was not folded into judgment or derision, but thoughtful and slightly guilty. "If I might ask a question of you, Green-san…"

"Yes?"

"Why do you ask this?"

Sydney leaned forward and put his forehead in his hand. "Because I too was trained to do as I was told by my employers without question — but by the time I began to ask questions, the situation had been manipulated to the point that I couldn't walk away. As the result, I have many regrets. I just wondered whether, with such an extreme career choice, you did too."

"I do not think of these things, Green-san — I know it would be a wasted endeavor if I did," Ikeda told him kindly, feeling a form of kinship with this American at last.

"Why is that?" the psychiatrist wanted to know.

"Because the past is only a memory that cannot be affected by any change in attitude toward it," Ikeda explained carefully. "The deeds are finished — the inevitable consequences of actions taken are already set into motion. For example, the lives I took cannot be returned — and the consequences of those actions will come to me no matter whether I regret taking the lives or not. Therefore I choose to spend my time making sure that the actions I DO take from now on will bring about the kinds of consequences I wouldn't mind facing."

"That sounds very simple," Sydney commented dryly. "I take it that it's far from easy?"

Ikeda shook his head with a silent chuckle. "Life itself isn't easy, Green-san. We are not guaranteed a trouble-free lifetime. All we can do is do the best we can in the present moment — and then face what comes at us as the consequence of that in its time. THAT," Ikeda leaned forward and put an index finger into the table in front of him, "is trusting Life to follow the path that it will take whether we want it to or no."

"And if you know you didn't do your best before?"

Ikeda leaned back. "That still is in the past — and the consequences of that will come. Learn from the mistakes you know you made in the past and make avoiding them part of what 'doing your best' means in THIS moment, especially as you face the consequences of those mistakes. To live in a constant state of regret is to focus so much on the past that the present and future are lost. I can think of no other action so useless."

Sydney finished the last of his water while he pondered what he'd been told. Then: "One last question?"

"Hai?"

"Would you ever go back to being an assassin?"

The Japanese man rose to his feet. "I am still an assassin, Green-san. If the situation arose, I would still kill — the only thing that has changed is that I no longer would do so at the unquestioning behest of another. My priorities… my loyalties… have changed, and so my willingness to use lethal force has necessarily been transformed to a degree." His dark eyes glittered dangerously. "But make no mistake — I can kill, and I will not hesitate to kill, if I see the need serving a greater purpose."

Sydney rose too. "Thank you, Mr. Ikeda. You have given me quite a bit to think about."

"Thank YOU, Green-san," Ikeda bowed deeply. "A chance to look into the mirror and review one's path in Life is a gift. You honor me with your discourse." He watched the American reach for his crutch. "Do you need assistance?"

"No, I'm fine," Sydney told him. "Thanks anyway."

By the time he had turned off the light over the sink, he knew that the ninja had retreated to the living room again. He in turn retreated to the darkened den, knowing that he now had quite an interesting perspective and approach to Life to ponder.

He certainly needed something — the perspective and approach he'd been using so far hadn't done him much good…

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	21. Holding Pattern

Resolutions – 21

Holding Pattern

by MMB

Tom Jackson tucked the information that he'd found the previous evening into his briefcase to present to his colleagues during their meeting at noon. Actually, he was rather proud of himself for having remembered hearing of this particular Centre enterprise while working as an intern in the State Department years ago — and even more proud of having had the foresight to gather information from a number of different sources since then.

He'd been involved with politics and the machinations of power for too long to have just let such valuable information slide in one ear and out the other. This was explosive stuff — the kind of scandal that the national media would just glom onto and gobble whole before checking sources. What was even better was that it put Miss Parker, this new paragon of ethics and virtue of the New Centre, smack dab into the middle of the ugliness. He turned back to tying his tie with a contented smile.

With just a few quick adjustments to his silk-backed vest, he returned to the bedroom to don his suit coat to put the polish on his image as a well-dressed and affluent member of Congress. His wife, Callie, had already risen and gone downstairs to supervise the making of breakfast — which he had deliberately made a hurried affair for many years now. He was content with her staying completely out of his way during the daytime — and it had taken a few years, and a few explosions of temper, to train her to stay out of his way. Now just a look or a slight frown would send her scurrying — which was just the way he liked it.

Ready to face the world, he took up his briefcase and walked sedately down the upstairs hallway — past the empty bedroom that had once housed his only daughter — and then down the stairs toward the formal dining room. The briefcase would then land on the chair next to his while he would sit briefly, drink his coffee, eat his toast and read the front section of the newspaper. Ten minutes would be all it would take to finish getting ready to go — and with luck, Callie would stay completely out of his way during that time.

The newspaper took his mood and soured it considerably. One of the front-page stories was of the break-up of a conspiracy within the military to develop weapons contrary to many international treaties and the attempted blackmail of a research corporation into complicity. Pictures of General Douglas Curtis and Colonel Gerald Harris punctuated the article, and mentioned somewhere in the middle was Colonel Daniel Stiller as a man driven to attempted murder to coerce cooperation. A vague line at the very end of the article was even more disquieting: "The FBI and Justice Department officials refused comment on rumors that further arrests would be made of civilian officials involved in the conspiracy."

They HAD to get this information on the Centre before the national media immediately! If the FBI and Justice Departments were that close to begin making civilian arrests, then they had little time to lose!

Jackson drained his coffee cup in a single draught, mindless of the scalding heat in his mouth, and left the table without taking more than a bite from his toast. He had to get to his office and get this material ready for dissemination once he had convinced his Senate colleagues that this was the way to proceed.

He had three hours to prepare.

Tyler breezed out of his office, on his way to meet with Miss Parker to go over contracts, just as Xing-Li was arriving. "Good morning, Mr. Tyler," she greeted him courteously.

"And a fine morning to you too, Xing-Li," he smiled back. "I'm glad I caught you before our day got really started. What are your plans for this evening?"

Xing-Li blinked. "I have no special plans, sir," she replied.

"You do now," Tyler perched himself on the corner of his desk. "I'm taking you out to dinner."

The almond eyes smiled at him as her head simply shook. "Mr. Tyler, I thought…"

"I talked to Miss Parker," he told her without his smile dimming a single watt, "and she said that for as long as we can keep our private life private and not bring problems to the office…"

"Mr. Tyler…"

"Cody. We're not on the clock yet."

Her expression communicated her mild frustration eloquently. "Mr. Tyler, it isn't wise."

"Why?" He folded his arms across his chest and looked at her. "Why isn't it?"

"Because…" She stared at him, knowing the answer to his question innately but unable to put it into words — much less English words. "Because," she announced finally.

"Sorry, not good enough," he announced, getting to his feet again. "I'll pick you up at six-thirty sharp."

"You are being very stubborn about this," she commented as she took her seat and drew out his appointment calendar book.

"I could say the same about you," he quipped back. "Miss Parker and I will be in her office for a while, going over paperwork. When's my first appointment?"

She opened the calendar with an efficient flip of a finger. "Nine-thirty."

"Good. If I'm not back by nine-fifteen, give me a call over there."

"Very good, sir."

"And dress casually tonight. We're not going anywhere fancy."

"Mr. Tyler…"

He walked away. "Call me at nine-fifteen. Don't forget…"

Xing-Li shook her head as the outer office door closed behind her boss. He was a most persistent man — and her time with him at the ice cream stand had introduced her to an interesting and fun-loving individual who had gone out of his way to try to make her feel comfortable under the circumstances. If only she didn't work for him during the day…

She heard voices outside the door, and almost immediately the outer door swung open again, and in walked Mei-Chiang. "I came to check up on how you're doing in your new position, Younger Sister," she smiled.

"As a secretary, fine," Xing-Li offered. "But Mr. Tyler has been making a point of trying to see me outside of work — privately…"

Mei-Chiang's face broke into a smile. "Ah! So you've caught the eye of an American too now," she commented knowingly.

"Older Sister, you know we were taught that relationships belonged either in the office or in the bedroom — and not in both places. What am I going to do?"

"Americans play the game by different rules," Mei-Chiang told her friend gently. "And Mr. Tyler is a most honorable man…"

"I know that…"

"Perhaps you are looking too far ahead of yourself, Younger Sister," the older woman remarked. "Perhaps Mr. Tyler simply seeks the pleasure of your company — and nothing more. Not all Americans are looking for concubines, you know…"

Xing-Li's almond eyes betrayed her skepticism. "Your Mr. Atlee…"

"Sam and I knew each other in a very superficial manner for quite a while before he went to California — and before we went out to dinner the first time. We had already expressed our… interest… in each other." She gave her younger friend an indulgent smile. "Besides, he asked me to marry him, not simply to ease his desires in bed."

"He took you to his bed very quickly," Xing-Li said softly.

"He gave me the option of saying no first — of stopping everything before it got started," Mei-Chiang told her candidly. "Nothing happened between Sam and myself that I didn't want as much as he did. And if Mr. Tyler is anything like Sam, he will also respect you in this way. So you don't have to feel obligated to do anything you don't truly want to."

Xing-Li looked down. "I'm just afraid of wanting too much, Older Sister, and being disappointed."

"Then just go along with Mr. Tyler as you would with any friend, and let a friendship happen. Be happy if something else starts later on."

"So you think I should go to dinner with him tonight?"

Mei-Chiang looked at her. "Do you want to go to dinner with him?"

Xing-Li blushed. "He is a very interesting person…"

"Then go, Younger Sister. Enjoy yourself and your time." Mei-Chiang looked at the clock. "I've got to go — Miss Parker will want coffee while she and Mr. Tyler review those contracts that had her scratching her head half the day."

"Thank you, Older Sister," Xing-Li said gratefully. "I guess I just needed someone to talk to about this."

Mei-Chiang put out a hand to her younger friend and held hers tightly for a moment. "You have a good day, and enjoy your evening."

"I will," Xing-Li stated with a much more secure smile. "I will."

By the time Sydney finally rose to see what there was for breakfast, Kevin and Deb had already made the coffee and were sitting at the table talking softly. The older man gave the young couple an indulgent look as he made his way on one crutch heading for the coffee pot. "I take it you two have resolved your differences from yesterday?" he asked, already seeing the answer in front of him in the way they acted almost linked one to the other. They had drawn their chairs close together and were holding hands.

"Yeah," Kevin told him simply. "Thanks."

"I'm glad," Sydney responded, putting the pot back in the coffee maker and making his way to the table where bread and butter and the toaster awaited.

"Would you like me to fry you an egg, Grandpa?" Deb offered in a much more settled tone of voice than she'd been using the last time he'd seen her.

"No, ma petite. Until I'm up and about a bit more, I'd better limit my food intake some," he responded. He pulled out his chair and leaned the crutch against the wall not far away before slipping into his seat. "But I'm glad you're both here. Considering what I found out yesterday, I think there are a few things I need to touch base with you about."

"What's that?" Kevin asked, putting a piece of bread into the toaster for his mentor.

"Like what kind of protection are you two using to prevent pregnancy?"

Deb's face went blank while Kevin's grew confused. "Protection?" the young Pretender asked in a shocked, quiet voice.

Sydney's eyebrows flew up his forehead. "You two DID give some thought to the fact that what you're doing could result in a child, didn't you?" He looked from one to the other of them, then focused on Deb. "I can excuse Kevin from remembering — no doubt his previous keeper neglected to tell him a great deal about the consequences of actions such as these — but you KNOW better!"

"I…" Deb's mind spun. The thought hadn't even crossed her mind. "It happened so fast… and then things were so crazy…"

Sydney sank his forehead into his hand. "Deborah Ann…"

"You mean to tell me…" Kevin was staring at Deb. "That's right! I could have made you pregnant!"

"We'll take care of it," Deb assured her lover fervently and then shot her grandfather a mixed look of gratitude and frustration. "I promise, Grandpa. We'll take care of it right away."

"A baby?" Kevin asked her in concern, then turned a worried look on his mentor. "What if…"

"We haven't made love that often," Deb shook her head firmly. "And we won't again until we have been to a drug store and have some condoms."

"Deb!" Kevin was looking at her almost frantically. "What if you're pregnant already?"

"I'm not," she assured him again with a shake of the head. "I can't be."

"You sound very sure of yourself," Sydney commented skeptically. How did Broots do it, he wondered — he had never realized just HOW determined and headstrong the girl had turned out to be. Or was it that she just had never turned that side of her persona on him full-throttle until he was functioning as her fulltime guardian in her father's absence?

"I am," she raised her chin defiantly. "And just to make sure, I can go to the health department at the school — I can get a prescription and go on the pill." She looked at Kevin. "There's a day-after pill I can take too — it will make sure that nothing… that I don't…"

"You're sure?" Sydney wanted to know, now pressing the issue determinedly.

"As sure as I can be," she admitted. "One of my friends started living with her boyfriend last year, and I went with her when she went to the health department and took care of business." She looked over at Kevin in chagrin. "I should have thought of this before now. Grandpa's right, I know better."

"Then, by way of setting ground rules, which was the other matter I wanted to talk to you about, I want you both to promise me that you won't touch each other until you have taken care of the issue, is that understood?" Sydney insisted firmly, working hard to keep his temper and not simply chew them both out.

"I promise," Kevin agreed easily.

"Do we have to sleep apart until then?" Deb wanted to know.

Sydney turned a quietly seething glare on her. The situation, as far as he was concerned, was bad enough already. He didn't need for her to turn stubborn on him. "You can last a couple of days, can't you?"

"I need Kevin to help me when the nightmares come," she told her grandfather simply. "They go away faster when he's there."

Sydney shook his head. "You were surviving without Kevin in your bed to get you over your nightmares quite nicely before…"

"No, I wasn't," she insisted firmly. "I just wasn't running downstairs to you every night."

"Then, if you need help to get over the nightmare, you can run downstairs to me again every night — twice a night if need be — until you have this situation under control," Sydney told her just as firmly. "When you are upset, no doubt, the temptation to use sex as a comfort mechanism is just too great." He saw her blush again. "Ah-HAH! You see…"

Deb did see, and it troubled her that her grandfather could see through her so easily on such intimate matters. "Grandpa, please?"

Sydney was shaking his head. "No, Deb. On this I will not compromise." He turned to Kevin. "Do you promise not to touch her until these things are taken care of?"

The young Pretender's eyes were wide and worried. "I'm not ready to be a father yet, Sydney," he told his mentor in a shaky voice. "I promise."

"Can't we just use condoms?" Deb demanded to know. "We can get them from the drug store this morning, for that matter…"

"Make your appointment to get your day-after pill," Sydney told her firmly, "and then we'll talk about how we will make your new relationship work."

"Grandpa…"

That did it. Sydney's eyes finally hardened. "Deborah, what did I tell you?" he asked in a very soft voice.

"I want to be with Kevin," she insisted stubbornly. "If we use a condom, there's no good reason…"

"Deborah Ann. Whose house is this?" The voice had slipped even lower.

Deb's eyes flew up to her grandfather's — she had never heard him use such a cold tone of voice with her before. "Yours," she answered softly.

"And what have you been asked?"

"To…" she looked over at Kevin for support. "To not sleep with Kevin again until I have things taken care of."

"And why are you being asked to do this?"

Kevin stared — the voice coming from his mentor was almost vicious in its lethal calmness, and he could tell that it was unnerving Deb as much as it was him. "Sydney…" he began, putting a hand on his mentor's arm.

The look in the chestnut eyes, when turned in his direction, was that of a stranger — and there was no mercy or flexibility to be found there. "Was I talking to you?"

"N…no, sir…" He backed off, hoping not to have that look turned on him for much longer.

"Deborah, I asked you a question," Sydney continued calmly and lethally, returning his attention to his granddaughter. "Why are you being asked to do this?"

"So that…" she was starting to shake — why was Grandpa behaving like this? "So that I won't get pregnant…"

"Do you have a problem with that?" was the next soft question.

"I need Kevin to help me over my nightmares," she insisted again. "I don't like to walk through the dark house in the middle of the night… It's like bringing the nightmare to life…"

"Sleeping with Kevin is not an option for you until you've seen the health department," Sydney intoned quietly. "What is more, if you will not comply with my request, I'll ask Miss Parker to make up a guest room in her house for you. At that point, you'll have neither Kevin's assistance in the night nor mine."

Her blue eyes flew up to meet the implacable chestnut in shock. "You wouldn't…"

"If I do not have your word, I most certainly will." It was obvious that she'd finally run headlong into the cement wall that was the end of her grandfather's virtually boundless patience — something she'd never found before.

"Deb," Kevin urged her with a hand on her arm. Sydney in this mood was a frightening individual. "Agree to his terms. Get your appointment today and get it taken care of as quickly as possible. It'll be OK."

Deb looked from her lover's imploring face to her grandfather's stony one, then sighed. "All right! All right! I'll wait until I've seen the doctor." Her eyes filled with tears. "God, Grandpa — I thought you were OK with what we were doing…"

"For as long as you and Kevin were the only people whose welfare was being impacted, I was," Sydney said, lightening his tone a little and putting just a touch more warmth in it. "But there is now the possibility a child has been conceived — and that changes everything." His tone cooled again. "You will keep to your own room in the night, whether you have condoms or no, and you will not sleep with Kevin again at all until you've seen the doctor. Is that understood?"

"I said I agreed," Deb snapped at him angrily. "What more do you want of me?"

"Less attitude and more compliance," Sydney snapped back. "I can still call Miss Parker — and I'm sure both she AND your father would support my decision under the circumstances." He glared at her. "The choice is yours."

The mention of her father did the trick. Deb backed down and huddled against Kevin. "I understand," she said finally, a tear making its way down her cheek. "I'm sorry, Grandpa."

"Then go. Make your appointment," Sydney gestured with his nose. When Deb stayed pressed against Kevin, he frowned and made his voice into a sharp verbal whip. "NOW, Deborah!"

She flew out of her seat with a muffled sob and ran to the front of the house and upstairs quickly. Sydney sighed and rested his forehead in his hand again.

Kevin regarded his mentor with some dread. "Are you angry with me too?" he asked finally in a very small voice.

"No, Kevin," Sydney said in a tired but far more normal tone. "As I said, I didn't expect you to think of this without assistance. I doubt Vernon ever even touched on the subject of contraception — am I right?"

"No…"

"There you are. Deb, however, knew better — and she KNEW she knew better."

"Are you still mad at her?" Kevin asked then, daring to approach him since the lethal and cold tone he'd been using was no longer present.

"I…" Sydney sighed again. "No. I'm disgusted that I had to be so hard on her to get her to cooperate in taking care of herself and you. Neither of you need the responsibility of a baby right now — you two are barely able to take charge of the responsibilities that go along with an intimate relationship. I just wish she could have been more… reasonable."

"I promise I'll make sure nothing happens until she sees the doctor," Kevin assured his mentor earnestly. "And I'll talk to Deb and try to make her see things your way."

Sydney turned tired eyes on his protégé. "That would be very helpful, Kevin. Thank you." He rose and reached for his crutch. "I think I'm going to try to lie down again. I didn't sleep very well last night — and I don't think that helped my mood just now."

Kevin watched the older man move slowly and carefully back toward the den. No, the young man agreed, the fatigue certainly hadn't helped the situation. His mentor had changed since he'd vanished — where he had always seemed in balance before, he seemed… considerably less so now. The young Pretender could no longer ignore the fact, nor help wonder whether it was a good thing or a bad thing.

One thing was for certain: he NEVER wanted to make Sydney mad at him — not after that display!

Crystal smoothed her hands down her pantsuit once more as she sat in front of Miss Parker's secretary's desk. The beautiful oriental woman would occasionally look up and give the young girl a supportive smile as she waited for Miss Parker to emerge and take her to the clerical department and leave her in the hands of that department's head. Mei-Chiang could remember feeling much the same at one time.

There was the sound of voices behind the door drawing closer, and then Miss Parker emerged with another man, and they were amid conversation. "…would never have seen that if you hadn't pointed it out to me," she finished, then blinked at the sight of a more formally dressed young woman waiting for her in her office. "Ah. My nine o'clock is here. Thanks again."

"My pleasure, Miss Parker," Tyler grinned and then smiled gamely at the young woman with the horribly bruised and battered-looking face. "Hello," he said kindly and left the office, not waiting to be introduced.

"Are you ready for this?" Miss Parker asked, calling Crystal's attention back to the step she was about to take in her life.

"I guess so," the girl responded nervously.

Miss Parker gestured for Crystal to follow and then started off. She approved of the clothing the girl had purchased the day before and decided to tell her — the girl looked as if she could use all the encouragement she could get right now. "You chose your wardrobe well," she commented approvingly. "You look very professional this morning."

"Thanks," Crystal answered shyly. "I just wish my face didn't look like it just came out of a meat grinder."

Miss Parker shook her head. "That will fade in time. Here we are…" She pushed through a set of double doors and headed immediately through the collection of desks for the office door that stood in the far wall. She knocked and then opened the door inward. "Karen, this is the young lady I was telling you about…"

Karen Cushman surveyed the young woman from top to bottom very quickly and then turned to her boss. "Yes, ma'am. I'm sure we can find something to keep her busy."

"Ms. Cushman will be your direct supervisor, Crystal," Miss Parker explained quickly. "You will answer to her, and she'll be the one to give you your assignments. Will that be OK?"

"Yes, ma'am!" Crystal said earnestly and turned a wary eye to the tall and thin woman who oversaw the clerical workers in the pool. "Thank you again, Miss Parker."

"I look forward to hearing good things about you," Miss Parker said by way of a farewell. "Hang in there." And then she was gone, and Crystal was left looking at her new boss with some trepidation.

"Your name is Crystal, is it?" Ms. Cushman wanted to know.

"Yes, ma'am."

"What's your last name?"

Crystal blinked. "I don't use one, ma'am," she stammered.

"No last name?" The dark brows rose in surprise. "Our crew runs on last names here."

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Crystal trembled slightly but stood her ground. There was no way in the world that she wanted to claim the name of the man who had beaten her mother and her so often. "Can't I just be Crystal?"

"I guess that will have to do," Ms. Cushman sighed, and then signaled for her to follow. "The first thing we need to test is your filing skills — alphabetizing and putting things in numerical order. Come with me…"

Crystal followed, trying to ignore the curious peeks and glances she was getting from the others in the room. She'd worked on her father's files often enough to know that alphabetizing and numerical ordering were child's play. It looked as if the challenge of this job would be simply fitting in eventually.

It was nearing lunchtime when Kevin raised his head from his reading. Sounds of movement were coming from the back of the house again, and he put the folder down on the coffee table and went to investigate. Sure enough, Sydney was up again, looking a little more rested this time, and pouring himself another cup of tepid coffee. "Feel better?" Kevin asked from his post against the doorjamb.

"Much," was the brief reply. Sydney gave his protégé an assessing look. "But you look down — depressed. What's the matter?"

"Deb has been upstairs all this time," he told him, "and she won't even let me in to talk to her."

Sydney nodded and then shook his head in regret. "I'll handle it," he said and opened one of the drawers. He scrabbled through a collection of tools, loose batteries and extension cords until he pulled out a tool that had been carefully hidden amid the chaos. He slipped it into his trousers pocket, hoping it wouldn't be needed — perhaps Deb would still be approachable enough to simply let him in.

"What are you going to do?" Kevin wanted to know.

"Talk to her," the psychiatrist said calmly, "whether she wants me to or not."

"Sydney," Kevin hesitated, and his mentor turned to look at him expectantly. "Don't get angry with her again."

"I won't," Sydney promised. "I still haven't smoothed things over from this morning — and that's probably why she's still upset."

"I think you scared her," Kevin told him in a shaky voice. "I know you sure scared ME."

"I know," Sydney replied regretfully. "That tends to be the response when I finally do lose my temper with someone." He gave Kevin a quick smile. "The good news is that I get over my anger very quickly — but the bad is that I usually have to deal with someone traumatized by it afterwards. It's why I try not to lose my temper very often."

Kevin nodded understandingly. "Do you want me to help you talk to her?"

"No," Sydney shook his head. "This needs to be between me and Deb alone." He gave his protégé a sharp look. "No eavesdropping, now…"

"No, sir!" Kevin shook his head vehemently. He'd learned his lesson — when Sydney and Deb were working together, he was going to stay far, far away from any possibility of hearing what was going on.

Sydney took the stairs carefully, finding that he had less trouble navigating them with one crutch now than he had navigating them with two less than a week earlier. At least that was a sign things were starting to improve a little… He walked down the hallway until he stood in front of his own bedroom door, then knocked. "Deb? May I come in please?"

There was a moment of absolute silence from behind the door, and then a click told him that she'd unlocked the door. Grateful he wasn't going to have to pick the lock after all, he turned the knob and pushed the door open to find her sitting on the edge of the bed, her eyes puffy from crying. She refused to look at him, so he sighed, closed the door and came over to sit down carefully next to her on the bed, leaning his crutch against the footboard.

"I know you're upset with me, Grandpa," she said, her fingers lacing and unlacing together nervously, "and I know why. I'm sorry…"

"I'm sorry too, ma petite," he said softly. "I just worry about you so much and want to keep you from making the big mistakes that you'll have to live with for the rest of your life. I know Kevin has been helping you with your nightmares — and I'm glad for it, really." He nodded when she looked up briefly, startled. "I'm not blind, Deb. I can see that he's very good for you — and you for him."

"But I thought…"

"My only concern is that you have been very foolish in not making sure you weren't going to get pregnant — at least after the first night. I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to be a GREAT-grandfather yet." He saw her give a chuckle that threatened to turn into a sob. "And you're not ready to be a mother yet either — although I have no doubt that when that time does come, you'll be a good one."

"Are you still mad at me then?" The question was very soft.

"No, cheri," he said, putting his arm around her finally. "I was only angry with you when you seemed determined to be unreasonable in regards to your own welfare. I just love you too much to let anybody hurt you — much less let you hurt yourself through stubbornness. I'm going to protect you — even from yourself, if need be." He felt her lean against him at last, relaxing into his side. "Did you make your appointment, as I asked?"

She nodded. "Monday morning, ten o'clock." She huddled against him, thankful that whatever had sparked that cold stranger to rise out of the warmth of her grandfather had passed. "I'm sorry, Grandpa," she repeated brokenly. "I just want to not have to worry so much about my nightmares anymore…"

Sydney turned toward her and surrounded her with his arms and felt her nestle down against him. "You'll be all right, ma petite. It's only for a few nights — and you can buy your condoms on your way home from the library today so that you can be ready."

"What if…?" she started hesitantly.

"What if what, sweetheart?" he asked gently.

"What if I'm already pregnant? What am I going to do?" There. The fear she'd carried around ever since he'd mentioned it was now out. She wrapped her arms around her grandfather and held on tightly.

"I thought you said you were sure…"

"I can't be, can I?" she admitted in a small voice. "We WEREN'T using protection. Grandpa, I don't know what to do…"

The grey eyebrows had climbed his forehead, but his arms around his granddaughter stayed strong and supportive. "Well, you'd have to make some very difficult decisions, wouldn't you?" he told her gently. "First and foremost, whether or not you wanted to keep the baby."

"Daddy would kill me…"

"Your father is probably already going to go postal on the both of us when he finds out," he told her dryly, "you for what you've started, and ME for allowing it to go on in my house while you were under my care."

"It's not your fault, Grandpa," she complained.

"Tell your father that," Sydney snorted. "But back to your concern. You should think about what you would do about the baby, Deb — and it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to do your thinking with Kevin there with you. He would be the father — it would be his child too — he deserves to have a say. After all, no contraceptive technique is ever one hundred percent reliable. Even if you aren't pregnant now, there's no guarantee that several months or a year down the line…"

She nodded against him and burrowed deeper into his arms. "I'm so sorry I made you angry, Grandpa," she sniffled. "You were just trying to help. I was being a brat," she accused herself.

"Well, I'm not angry with you now, ma petite," Sydney soothed and tightened his arms around her. "Hush now and come back downstairs. Kevin is worried about you." He gave a very gentle tug on the blonde braid hanging down her back. "Better now?"

Deb pushed herself away from him and looked up into warm chestnut eyes that will full of love for her and felt as if her roller coaster ride that morning were finally finished. She nodded and wiped at her tears with the back of her hand. "Thanks, Grandpa."

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead very gently. "I love you very much, Deb. I can only hope that you know that."

"I do, Grandpa," she told him with no hesitation at all. "I do." She also had learned a very good lesson — what worked with her father didn't always work on others, and sometimes what worked with her father had consequences she really didn't want to face.

Cindy looked up as Jarod came toward her desk to reclaim Ginger, his briefcase in hand. "So," she said sadly, "this is really it?"

He nodded. "I'm on my way back to Delaware as of tomorrow morning." He looked around the office and into the waiting room. He had spent a great deal of time and money making his practice work and to make the office itself a factor in the therapy. Finding Cindy had been a real benefit, for her steady and happy personality made the prospect of coming to work every day a joy. "I'm going to miss you, lady."

"Hush now, Doctor Jarod — you know you're going to be in hog heaven with that pretty lady of yours and your family all together again," she shook her beaded head at him. "But I have to admit, I'm going to miss you too."

"Come here so I can get a hug," Jarod said, putting his briefcase down on the floor. Cindy giggled and rose from her chair and put her arms around the waist of her boss and felt him hug her back. "You take good care of Ethan and Charles for me," he told her softly. "Don't let 'em get away with anything now…"

"You can count on me," she chuckled as he let her go and she could turn to the little girl who was still sitting at her chair watching the action. "I'm going to miss you too, Sweet Pea," she said, putting out her arms to gather the child to her. "You be sure to take real good care of your Daddy for me now, won't you?"

"OK," Ginger chirped brightly. She was going to miss this warm-hearted woman who had always had a smile for her, even during the bad times. "Miss oo, Cindy."

Cindy kissed her on the forehead and then let her go take her father's hand. "Now THAT'S what I call a success story, Doctor Jarod," she said, looking at the two of them. Doctor Jarod was handsome enough that he'd even managed to set HER heart beating more than a few times in the beginning of their acquaintance, and now with his little girl in hand, and she with her ever-present Bear, he looked the settled family-man from tip to toe. "I can't think of two people who deserved each other more." She blinked quickly to try to prevent a tear. "You go on now, and keep in touch, will you?"

"Only if you promise that if you get tired of Ethan working you to death, you'll think about relocating to the other side of the country and letting me have a crack at it again," Jarod told her as he reached down for his briefcase.

"If I ever go crazy, trust me, Doctor Jarod, you'll be the FIRST one I call," Cindy grinned. "Good bye, and good luck!"

"Good bye, Cindy," Jarod said with a touch of sadness.

"'Bye, Cindy," Ginger parroted.

"Good bye."

Cindy watched the front door close behind him and felt Ethan come up behind her. "So he's gone now?"

"He'll be happy on the other side of the country, won't he, Doctor Ethan?" she asked in concern.

Ethan nodded. "Oh, yes. He's going home, you see — he grew up there. He'll be at least as happy there as he has been here, I promise." He put a comforting hand on the receptionist's shoulder and then headed back toward his office.

"OK, people, so what have we got to work with?" Burns tried to sound optimistic, but his own lack of progress had disheartened him considerably.

"Getting any information on the Centre whatsoever is harder than trying to raise winter corn," Canfield said, his posture slumped. I haven't been around Capitol Hill long enough to have collected much of anything."

Jackson just smiled. "I, on the other hand, have been in and out of the halls of power for years, both before my election and since then. I have the quintessential story to leak."

"Do tell!" Burns brightened immediately. "What do you have?"

"Virtual slavery, gentlemen, made even more egregious by kidnap and medical experimentation." Jackson handed each of his colleagues a folder that contained copies of the information he'd taken from his own private files. "What's more, it contains enough explosive connections to OTHERS in Congress and even former occupants of the White House that it should knock our paltry doings off the front page before it even gets there."

"The Pretender Project?" Burns looked up from the first page in confusion. "What the Hell kind of project name is that?"

"A very carefully guarded one," Jackson grinned. "One that Mr. Raines himself told me very quietly that I would be best served forgetting. It seemed that for a number of years, the Centre kidnapped children who tested at the upper end of the IQ charts and then turned them into simulations artistes. These people were trained to climb into the heads and minds of others in a given scenario to predict future responses or diagnose responses in situations in the past. One of these 'Pretender's' names is predominant in all the material that I've gathered so far: Jarod. The man was a genius with an IQ straight off the charts."

"The Centre has recently undergone a major shakeup in administration," Burns reminded his Vermont colleague. "Why have we not heard of this Jarod before now?"

"Because he escaped from the Centre about twelve years ago," Jackson told them, feeling like he was narrating a bedtime story. "And a search and recover team was immediately formed that included…"

"Don't tell me… the inimitable Miss Parker herself," Burns crowed triumphantly. "Damn! We've got her! Did she know the particulars of the man she was hunting?"

"That's a good question — as is whether or not they were ever able to track him down and recapture him." Jackson looked at his colleagues with a delighted grin on his face. "The kinds of 'advice' this young man gave out for a hefty price paid directly into Centre coffers was varied both in subject and ethics."

"How are we going to handle spilling this?" Burns asked quietly. "Especially if this Jarod isn't anywhere in the Centre anymore, all it's going to take is Miss Parker throwing open the doors of the Centre and inviting the media to take a look for themselves…"

"Oh yeah — how likely do you think it would be for the Centre to just throw its doors open and invite the public to take a good snoopy peek into all the dark corners?" Jackson asked sarcastically. "Centre security has always rivaled or been tighter that of the Secret Service. She's not going to want cub reporters hot for scoops going through their files."

"Do you have proof that this Jarod was kidnapped?" Canfield asked after thinking about it for a while. "Any missing persons reports?"

"Page twelve," Jackson directed them. "His father never did stop looking for him — I've got a list of the agencies this Major Russell contacted and the reports he filed, as well as the notations of certain law enforcement officials who signed off on his being a crackpot. As for spilling this stuff, I suggest we just leak one or two of the items on which Jarod provided 'advice' that turned out sound — or which he outright engineered."

"Such as?" Burns was intrigued, but hated seeing Jackson usurp his leader's mantle so easily.

"The Nixon landslide, for one — and a detailed analysis of the Kennedy Assassination that predicts that telling the public that there was more than one assassin in Dallas would destabilize the country. I don't think the public will appreciate finding out that their emotions were being manipulated." Jackson sat back contentedly. "And there's more where that came from. This Jarod was one smart guy — he even predicted the kinds of civil reforms that Ashcroft began back in 2001 and where they could lead."

"Anything that will bite any of US in the ass?"

Jackson put a soothing hand on Canfield's shoulder. "Not a damned thing. Not one of us were in office when this joker was cranking out what were called 'SIMs' for the Centre, so not one of us has a thing to worry about."

"When?" Burns demanded. "When do we start this?"

Jackson shrugged. "Do either of you see any problem with my making a quiet 'Deep Throat' style call to the Washington Post?"

Canfield was looking concerned, but Burns finally began to nod. "I like it," the Florida Senator said after a while. "It's clean, and leaves nothing that leads back to us."

"I'll have my secretary set up the meeting with an ambitious and enterprising reporter I met over there a few weeks ago," Jackson informed them. "They may be tailing us, but I'll bet you anything they haven't caught on and started tailing our secretaries quite yet."

"You hope," Canfield mumbled anxiously.

"We'll find out soon enough," Burns remarked. "Let's do it."

"That's it then. Now," Jackson looked at his colleagues, "where do you guys want to be left off?"

Jarod sat on the edge of Ginger's bed, her entire wardrobe piled next to him waiting to be folded and packed into the suitcase he'd brought in for her. Ginger bounced on the bed next to him happily. "Me fly 'morrow, Daddy?"

"Yes," he answered patiently. "We're going to get into a company jet and fly for most of the morning and into the afternoon."

"Gamma come too?"

"Yes, Grandma's coming with us."

"We see Davy 'morrow?"

"Davy and Deb and Sam and Mommy — and some other people you haven't met yet, like your Grandpa Sydney."

"Him your Daddy?"

"Not exactly, Sprite. He's more like your Mommy's Daddy — but he was with me a lot when I was a boy. He taught me a lot of things." Jarod found trying to explain his relationship with Sydney to his daughter a bit difficult. "He's a very special person — and I think you'll like him very much."

"Me go school now?" she asked next. "Me go wif Davy go school?"

"I'm not sure, Sprite. You've been out of school for a while now – it may take you some time to catch up. And we want to work on your talking a bit more. Maybe your Grandpa Sydney can teach you the way he taught me, and get you ready for school." Considering the uncomfortable insights those Centre archives had been giving his old friend, maybe tutoring a young child to get her ready to re-enter public school might be a welcome change.

Uncertain dark eyes fixed on him. "Me not 'tay Gamma when you work?"

"I'm sure you'll be spending time with your Grandma Maggie at first," Jarod told her, reaching for the last of the tee shirts, "but you'll probably spend lots of time over at Grandpa Sydney's – especially when Grandma goes home again."

"Daddy," Ginger leaned in to her father's upper back, "me not want Gamma go 'way. Her 'tay us?"

Jarod gave up trying to pack and turned slightly on the bed so he could pull his daughter into his lap. "Grandma's only coming with us for a visit, Sprite – you know this. She'll stay with us for a little while, and then she'll want to come home to her house here."

"Who me talk to when Gamma gone?"

"Grandpa Sydney will talk to you, I'm sure."

"Me not know him." Ginger's voice was flat, distrusting. "Maybe him not like me."

"I happen to know," Jarod assured her with a kiss on the forehead, "that your Grandpa Sydney loves kids – and he's going to take one look at you and be head over heels. Then again, if it's a girl you want to talk to, there's always Mommy…"

Ginger didn't reply to that but merely pushed herself deeper into her father's embrace.

Jarod held her close for a while. "I thought you liked Mommy now."

"Her OK," Ginger allowed. It was hard to explain to him that while she liked Her, she didn't completely trust Her yet.

He stifled a sigh. He had hoped the touching scene just as Missy and Davy had left had meant that part of the wall that Ginger had built against the woman who would be her mother from now on was beginning to show signs of weakness. Then again, she had had over a week to recover from that first, tentative lapse – Missy would have to begin the process of winning her daughter's affections all over again.

"It'll be OK eventually, Sprite," he told her gently and hugged her close. "You'll also have Deb, and there's a really nice young man named Kevin that lives with Grandpa that you'll get a chance to know."

"No Unka Eefan?"

"He might come to visit us one day – your Mommy is his half-sister too."

"Unka Jay? Aunt Emmie?"

"Sweetheart, they'll come to visit us in time, and we'll be back to see them too. You just won't see them all the time, like now. It will make their visits special." Jarod set his daughter back on the bed and reached for the rest of the clothing. "Now you have to let Daddy get your clothes all packed – and then we have to find the box your clown light came in so we can take it with us for your new room."

"Me get new room?" That made the girl smile.

"Of course you do," Jarod smiled at her. "Mommy said it was her room when she was a girl. That means it must be pretty neat."

"Her 'tay us all time now?"

"Yes," Jarod chuckled. "Mommy and Davy will be with us all the time from now on. We're a family, Sprite – families stick together."

Ginger retrieved Bear from his place on her bed and hugged him close. It sounded so good when Daddy talked about it – and having Grandma there would definitely help – but the thought of leaving everything and everyone she had just come to know and be comfortable with behind was hard. Very hard.

"You going to help me pack my stuff too?" Jarod asked her, noticing how quiet she'd gotten all of a sudden. "Maybe Bear will come help too?"

"OK, Daddy, me help." Ginger scrambled to follow her father from one bedroom to the next. Packing sure seemed to be a long and drawn-out process…

Colonel Daniel Stiller still couldn't believe his eyes. He stared down at the newspaper headline detailing the military arrests that had been made the day before with an increasingly sinking feeling. The names mentioned in the article were those with which he had become very familiar over the last few years as liaison between the knot of super-patriots and the Centre: Curtis, Harris, and Lewis especially.

He looked around him at his cell. Blue Cove did NOT have modern jail facilities – his cell was bars on three sides anchored very securely into cinderblock walls, his bed was a steel platform bolted to the cinderblock upon which a thin mattress was lain. Meals were shoved through very narrow slot at floor level, and there was a desk near the locked steel door at which a police officer seemed continually in attendance. Stiller doubted that the station was usually manned at all hours like it had been since he'd gotten there. Only one other prisoner had been held during his tenure there – a drunk who had thrown up messily all over the cement floor not long after his arrest, spent most of the night muttering miserably about his fate and then had been released about noon the next day.

More than anything, he did NOT want to spend very much more time there. Military lockups were far more modern and provided at least a minimum of privacy from the neighboring cells. Having to park it on the bed and pull his feet up when the drunk's mess had been hosed down was the kind of indignity that should never be visited upon an officer of his rank.

"Hey there!" he called to the officer at the desk. "Lemme speak to your Police Chief. I want to make a statement."

The officer raised his head and then shook it. "No can do, buddy. Orders are to hold you for the military police later today. Your case has been booted into military court."

Stiller swallowed. Being sentenced to years at Leavenworth wasn't his idea of proper payment for loyalty to the concept of patriotism. "I want to talk to a lawyer."

"You'd best wait for a military lawyer, Colonel," the officer suggested. "That way, you won't screw yourself over by talking to the wrong person while you're out here."

"But I know things… things other people might want to know…"

"Save it," the officer picked up the newspaper and opened it up. "And save your breath. You'll get out of here the moment the MP's produce the paperwork for you, and not one moment sooner."

Stiller sighed and sank back down onto the bed and read further into the front page article. He wondered briefly if the civilian authorities knew just exactly how high up the ladder of authority the conspiracy had actually gone? Maybe he WOULD have something to bargain for once he was away from this hick jail.

Margaret stood in front of her closet trying to decide which outfits to take down from their hangers to pack. She couldn't even remember what kind of weather to expect in Delaware at this time of year, it had been so long since she'd been anywhere near the place. She sighed, pulled down a couple of shirt dresses and pant suits that could be worn somewhere nice to go with the pair of jeans and blouses she'd selected for those days when she'd be spending time at home with Sprite and maybe even Davy.

As the time for her departure for Delaware was drawing closer, she was starting to second-guess her own reasons for going. She knew for a fact that Ginger was thrilled to have her 'Gamma' coming with her – that little one could use all the reassurance she could get as she prepared to move into an entirely new world of being a little sister in an intact family. Jarod, too, had shown signs that he was pleased that she had decided to set aside a firm resolution in order to keep closer ties with him as he moved back to the place where he'd been raised.

No, her doubts were centered around an unknown man by the name of Sydney – a man who she knew Jarod had always considered as much a father-figure as Charles had been in the last years of his life. So many of the preconceptions that she had been holding about these shadowy figures from her son's past had turned out to be illusions or misunderstandings – certainly meeting and learning to genuinely enjoy the company of the woman once in charge of Jarod's capture had taught her that if she wanted to keep close ties with Jarod, she would need to make peace with his past – and hers.

But Sydney had never been a part of HER past. According to Missy, the man who had talked to her about Jarod all those years ago had been Sydney's twin brother, Jacob – and that Sydney hadn't known that Jarod had actually been stolen until much, much later. Still, Jarod had always been reluctant to share much about his childhood and early adult years in the Centre's custody, letting anybody who asked know that some of the memories were still painful. And a lot of those painful memories had to do with something that Sydney had been a part of – or which Sydney hadn't prevented for whatever reason.

"Mom, are you here?"

"In here," Margaret called out to her daughter.

A few moments later, Emily's dark head poked around the corner of the bedroom door. "Packing still?"

"I've forgotten – is it hot in Delaware at this time of year, or should I take a sweater?" she asked with a sigh.

"It's still fairly warm," Emily replied. "I was just wondering if there was anything else I could do for you before you left?"

Margaret shook her head. "No – all I need to do is get everything into this suitcase and then get over to your kitchen to help you with your meal…"

"Forget the meal, Mom. Are you SURE you want to go through with this?"

The older woman looked at her daughter. "If you had lost Sammy, and then gotten him back much later, wouldn't you want to know what kind of person was taking care of him?"

"Mom, this is different," Emily reminded her. "This Sydney – he wasn't a caretaker, he was more like a keeper, a teacher…"

"That isn't the way Jarod thinks of him, and you know it, Em," Margaret shook her head. "Even your father knew that Sydney occupied a very special place in your brother's heart behind all the sense of betrayal and anger. He was important enough that Jarod went back to find him after your father died. I need to know what kind of man would command that kind of loyalty despite everything."

Emily came around the end of the bed and sat down not far from where her mother was standing and folding clothes. "I also came to tell you some news."

"Oh?" Margaret glanced up into her daughter's face and saw a gentle glow. "What's going on?"

"Well, you know that Nathan and I have been trying for another child for a while…"

"Em!" Margaret dropped the shirtdress she'd been folding and took one of her daughter's hands in hers. "You're going to have a baby?"

Em nodded happily. "I thought that since everybody's going to be here tonight, I'd make the formal announcement – but I wanted you to know it first."

"When?"

"Mid to late April, if everything goes OK." Emily held onto her mother's hand tightly. "You WILL be back in time, won't you?"

"Emily! I told you I'm only going to be gone a couple of weeks."

"I know you did – but this is the first time since we all settled down here that any one of us has deliberately left the fold. I was just afraid that if Jarod wanted you…"

Margaret put her arm around Emily and pulled her close. "When the time gets closer, there's not much of anything that will pull me away from you, Pumpkin. You can bet your bottom dollar that I'll be right here when that new grandson or daughter of mine makes an entrance."

Emily relaxed against her mother in relief. "Thanks, Mom." It was hard to think that her mother would ever be anywhere else but there in Monterey with her – but now, with Jarod heading to the other side of the country… "I know this makes me sound like a jealous sister…"

"Don't worry about it," Margaret soothed. "I have no intentions of playing favorites between you and your brother. But speaking of brothers, have you told Sammy that he's going to be an older brother soon?"

Emily smiled again and reached for one of the blouses that Margaret had set out for packing and began to tell her mother about the reaction of her first-born to the idea of a new baby in the house. And Margaret deliberately set aside her concerns and doubts about the wisdom of actually meeting Sydney for when she could stew alone again – right now, there were far more pleasant things to be thinking about.

Feedback, please –


	22. Holding Pattern Part 2

Resolutions – 22

Holding Pattern

by MMB

"What do you mean, you keep losing them?"

Gillespie stood in front of his boss' desk and shrugged. "For the last two days, the three of them have climbed into a car and driven aimlessly around town for about a half an hour or so. Yesterday, our attempt to listen in on their conversation at a restaurant ended up defunct because they never actually went IN to the restaurant – today, the car went around and picked them each up one by one and then let them off afterwards."

Berghoff frowned. "You did follow them, though?"

"Yeah, for whatever good it did – they didn't stop or stay any one place for longer than it takes a red light to turn green," Gillespie stated in frustration. "I think they've figured out that we have a tail on them – maybe even have guessed about the phone taps – and now are using these mobile meetings to get away with making plans without our being able to know what those plans might be."

"So, what do you suggest?" the Assistant Director asked his agent curiously. "We know we have put the screws to these guys – but if we can't figure out what they're going to do next, we won't know where or how to make our move to catch them with their pants down."

"You've got me," Gillespie said with a shake of the head. "Surveillance tapes indicate that they're not in telephone contact with each other at all. So everything they do must be being planned in those car treks or…" The FBI agent began to smile. "…or their secretaries are making the arrangements for them…"

Berghoff's eyebrows rose halfway up his face. "Now that would be a novel idea – get the secretaries to make the arrangements on other than office lines. It would be harder to chase down."

"These guys are cagey," Gillespie admitted reluctantly. "Something tells me we're going to have to really stay on our toes if we intend to nail them."

"Obviously," he agreed. "They must have something in mind, or else they'd be starting to run damage control big time. I wonder if a call over to Senator Ashland would give us a clue as to what they're up to."

"You think they'd do something official?" the agent gasped. "Doing something very public could backfire on them pretty badly when we have all the evidence we need to haul them in."

"Unless what they hope to instigate would be even bigger than their own problems would be," Berghoff said thoughtfully. "Call Ashland and see if she's got anything new, and I'll start setting up teams on the secretaries." His face drooped in frustration. "This is getting to be a damned expensive investigation resources-wise. We'd better come up with something very solid very soon, or I'm going to be on the carpet trying to explain why I have a total of fifteen men so far investigating three Senators."

Karen Cushman looked over into the corner where the girl that Miss Parker had dumped on her was finishing the filing job she'd been given, and the clerical supervisor had to give a reluctant grunt of approval. The girl may not answer to a last name and looked as if she'd been on the losing end of a prizefight, but she knew how to file – both numerically and alphabetically. In fact, she was quite good at it, knowing without having to be told that sorting the material to be filed ahead of time would shorten the job considerably.

"Well, how's our intern working out?"

Cushman jumped to hear Miss Parker's voice come from behind her. "Doing better than I'd anticipated," she admitted, "considering that she refuses to give a last name by which we can call her and looks like she…"

"How she looks at the moment has nothing to do with whether or not she can handle the job," Miss Parker reminded her employee pointedly. "What I'm interested in is whether or not she can handle the duties you would give her, not whether she gives you a last name – which is NOT standard Centre practice, by the way…"

"It has been protocol in THIS department for many years now," Cushman said archly. "It had been long established that way when I inherited the job five years ago…"

"Well, consider it diminished to a VOLUNTARY practice from now on," Miss Parker directed firmly. "The use of a last name as a form of direct address tends to depersonalize an employee – and right now, I'm looking to build a loyal and motivated staff rather than the alienated one I inherited. It will be interesting to see how many of your staff will opt for being called by their first names at last once they see Crystal get away with it." The storm grey eyes were sharp and inflexible. "Won't it?"

"Yes, ma'am," Cushman grumbled.

"Good. I'm glad you see things my way," Miss Parker stated pointedly, deciding that she'd have Tyler keep an eye on this department over the next few weeks to see whether Karen Cushman was ready to work for a saner, friendlier Centre. She WAS, after all, the person Raines had put in charge of the clerical pool not long after he'd taken the reins of power – and just how well she'd do in a less authoritarian administration was yet to be seen.

In the meantime, however… She made her way to Crystal's side. "I thought I'd stop by and see how you were doing before the day was over," she said to the girl gently.

Crystal was astonished. "But… you're the Chairman," she gaped.

"Yes," Miss Parker agreed with a small grin, "I am. What about it?"

The dark eyes were wide and obviously intimidated. "You do realize that everybody in here is scared spitless of you, don't you?"

That made the tall brunette chuckle as she looked around her at heads deliberately turned to their computer screens and not watching them at all. "You see, I have a certain reputation left over from years past for being… shall we say LESS than approachable," she told the girl in a confidential tone.

"But then that just makes me wonder why you'd worry about ME – I mean, I'm just a clerical flunky…"

"You are important to someone who is important to me," Miss Parker told her in an even tone. "Two somebodies actually – between Sydney and Sam, I'd never hear the end of it if I didn't keep my eye on you and make sure you get a decent chance to make it."

Crystal ducked her head and busied herself with her filing. "I don't want to stand out here," she said softly. "Ms. Cushman already resents me because I wouldn't give her my last name. She calls everybody in here by their last names – and it sucks."

"I AM going to need your last name eventually so that I can have the payroll department make out your paychecks, you know," Miss Parker told her carefully. "But I've already spoken to Ms. Cushman about calling people by their last names only – and told her that policy is no longer a mandatory one."

"Can I just make up a last name and you can use that one instead?" Crystal asked plaintively. "I mean, Crystal isn't my real name anyway – just the one I want people to call me now. How about I just tell you 'James' or something…"

"Is there a problem with people finding out your family name that I should know about?"

"No, ma'am," the girl responded immediately. Certainly her last name wouldn't cause the same kind of comment HERE that it would have at home – but still... "It's just that… I'd just as soon not belong to the family that raised me – if you know what I mean… I came a long distance and changed my name completely to get away from them – I don't want anyone to make any kind of connection that would get back to…"

"Are you in trouble back home, is that it?" Miss Parker put a hand on her shoulder.

"No. Like I told Sam, I just don't want to live life as a punching bag anymore," Crystal said dully. "And right now I really need to get this filing done…"

"OK, Crystal James it is," Miss Parker said cautiously. "You go ahead and finish, and have a good weekend. There will be a picture ID card waiting for you at the front desk when you come to work on Monday morning with that as your name."

"Thank you, Miss Parker," Crystal said earnestly. "I really appreciate everything you're doing for me."

Miss Parker smiled and then walked through the clerical pool, unable to miss several clerical workers looking over at the girl with either extreme curiosity or jealousy in their eyes. She'd have to use other means to keep an eye on the girl for Sydney – Crystal probably was right to not want to stand out from the rest. Maybe Mei-Chiang could be her eyes and ears down here – or even Xing-Li.

She'd have to ask.

"Here's the cell phone you wanted, Senator – and I delivered the package to the Post." Celia said efficiently. "Is there anything else you wanted before I head off for the weekend?"

"No," Senator Jackson told her with a shake of the head. "Thanks for taking care of those things for me – you really are a life-saver, you know…"

The woman who had been his secretary for nearly ten years smiled and preened in the light of his appreciation and then gestured. "I'm off, then. I'll see you Monday morning."

"Absolutely."

He waited until Celia had pulled the door shut behind herself on her way home before Jackson pulled a slip of paper from his shirt breast pocket and dialed the number written there.

"Washington Post," came the neutral receptionist's voice.

"I want to speak to David Lawler," Jackson said quietly and calmly.

"Just one moment," was the response, and then the line went dead in his ear as he was put on hold and transferred. Jackson waited patiently while the other end of the line suddenly rang four times, and then was picked up. "Lawler."

"Did you get the package I sent you?" Jackson asked, whispering into the receiver.

"Speak up, sir, I can't…"

"No," Jackson refused, his voice still a whisper. "So, did you get it?"

"I got… something…" Lawler looked at the manila envelope that had been dropped on his desk only a few minutes earlier. "You wanna save me some time reading it and tell me what this is all about?"

"It's about secrets and lies," Jackson whispered ominously. "Secrets and lies that your readers might find VERY interesting."

"What kind of secrets and lies?" Lawler demanded, his slender fingers working the flexible metal tabs to open the envelope and pull out the file folder that was inside.

"Read it," Jackson demanded, still in a whisper. "I'll wait."

There was a long moment of silence, then, "The Centre? Is that the same place…"

"That was bombed a few weeks ago? Yes," Jackson answered in an even softer whisper.

The silence on the other end of the line stretched out as Lawler leafed slowly through the pages of the folder, skimming the information and stopping at random points to read more in depth. "This is very interesting reading, Mr…"

"Call me… Deeper Throat," Jackson whispered with a soft chuckle.

"Yeah, right. Very cute." Lawler sounded thoroughly skeptical. "You know, I see a lot of accusation in here and not a whole lot of substantiation to go with it. For example…" He flipped back through the pages until he had found the paper documenting Maj. Charles Russell's attempts to involve several law enforcement agencies in an investigation of his allegation against the Centre of kidnapping. "I see that this Major Russell filed several missing persons documents – but I don't see any subsequent reports from those agencies either dismissing the allegation or keeping it open, nothing."

"All in good time," Jackson promised.

"Right," Lawler grimaced. "Look. The Centre is an object of considerable public sympathy right now because of all the people that were killed in the bombing – as well as those whom the new Chairman personally helped rescue. I'm going to need a helluva lot more than vague accusations before I'll write any kind of expose."

"You'll get your proof…"

"What I'd REALLY need would be an interview with this Pretender himself – this… Jarod fellow."

Jackson snorted. "I'm sure the Centre itself would like an 'interview' with this Jarod fellow too," he whispered caustically. "Inasmuch as the Centre never managed to catch him – at least as far as my sources are concerned – I'd say your chances of talking to a victim of this project stand somewhere between slim and none. However, and aside from that – if I bring you more proof, would you be interested?"

Lawler ran his slender fingers through his ample and curly brown hair. He'd been at this desk, writing public interest pieces for nearly a year now – neither excelling nor bombing out totally. A decent and juicy expose could put him one the reporting map – in much the way Woodward had vaulted from obscurity to national renown. "You get me bonafide, verifiable sources who'll vouch for the truth of some of this, and I'll be definitely interested, Mr… Whomever."

"Watch your inbox, then," Jackson whispered. "You'll hear from me again." He disconnected the call abruptly and smiled. It would take law enforcement quite a while to figure out his association with this particular cell phone number – he ought to be able to get things nicely moving toward the explosion of scandal before anybody figured anything out – by which time, maybe Lawler wouldn't need his guidance to dig deeper into Centre skeletons anymore.

All in all, it had been a very productive day. Now it was time to head home and see if Callie had his dinner ready yet. He looked down at his watch – he was running about fifteen minutes later than usual – so if the food wasn't on the table, hot and ready to be served… His eyes twinkled coldly.

Sydney sighed and dropped the folder he'd been skimming through into the pile of 'to be incinerated' material and lay back into his pillows. He was tired – he hadn't slept really well the night before, and his attempt to nap after lunch had been futile. Worry about Deb and Kevin and their situation hadn't helped, not with so much else bubbling up in his mind. There were now too many memories of Dachau and pain and hopelessness escaping the dark places to which he'd banished them for him to be able to rest. It wasn't fair – he didn't WANT to remember these things, and certainly not NOW! He had too much to do – too many responsibilities despite being laid up on this damned couch – to be suffering insomnia or any other Post-Traumatic Stress symptom from something that had happened over two-thirds of a lifetime ago.

"It's after five," Kevin announced from the kitchen doorway. "Are you ready to get unplugged?"

"Absolutely," the older man agreed readily. He watched the young man move into the room and sit down on the coffee table like he always did at both ends of the day. "How is your reading going?"

Kevin just shook his head as he turned off the machine. "I just can't get over the amount of basically useless experimentation that was done back in the late 60's and early 70's, Sydney – stuff on the effects of sleep deprivation or oxygen starvation on the mind's ability to concentrate and solve problems. Some of the techniques…"

"I know," Sydney closed his eyes and lay back against the comfortable pillow. "Most of that was work that Mr. Raines was doing after he lost his license to practice medicine."

"I keep seeing and hearing that man's name," Kevin said, reaching out for the buckles that held the injured knee to the cradle of the therapy machine. "Who WAS he, and why did he always manage to choose the most inhumane and cruel methodology?"

Sydney opened his eyes and looked at his young protégé evenly. "Be glad you never met him or had to endure an experiment under his aegis, Kevin," he told him seriously. "The man was a monster – a monster that ended up running an organization that did monstrous things in the name of science and profit, no matter the cost in human suffering."

"You said he lost his license to practice medicine – when did that happen?" the young Pretender lifted Sydney's leg away from the machine so that he could stand and move the device away from the couch and onto the floor out of the way.

"That would have been about 1968," Sydney remembered, running his finger alongside the edge of his nose as he thought back. "It was the result of certain experiments with children involved in the Pretender Project…"

"Jarod?" Kevin asked, clearly interested.

"No, I managed to talk Mr. Parker out of giving Raines temporary control of Jarod and putting him through…" Sydney sighed. "Raines had his own private Sim Lab set up in SL-27 in those days, and he was given three of the Red File subjects in an effort to boost their intellectual capabilities as Pretenders and test their tolerances to stress and other negative factors. But Raines' techniques were, as you say, cruel and inhumane – and the subjects that were given to him to work with all ended up damaged to a greater or lesser extent as the result of the tests. Two of them died — I didn't find out for sure what REALLY happened to the third until much, much later." Sydney glanced at Kevin and saw the look of disgust on the young Pretender's face.

"But…" Kevin struggled to understand. "Wasn't there, even at that time, a code of ethics…"

"Yes," Sydney nodded with grim satisfaction. "In the end, it was that and the evidence of some of his experimentation reaching the right people that lost him his license. I did my part to help that process along…"

Kevin looked at his mentor in surprise. "You turned him in?"

"In a manner of speaking," Sydney admitted. "Actually, I was the one that put together the evidence of the two deaths and what had caused them – it was Miss Parker's mother, Catherine, who saw to it that the evidence reached the governing board of the American Association of Psychiatry. I only knew the details of the information I gathered for her – but that was enough to give me nightmares for weeks. However, it seemed, sabotaging Raines in this way was Catherine's revenge for what Raines had done to that third Red File child known as Timmy. In many ways, the two children who died in the fire that destroyed that sublevel were the lucky ones — and she never forgave him for what he had already done to Timmy. She saw to it he was reprimanded and censured by his peers — stripped of any official authority."

"But Sydney," Kevin said cautiously, "the censure didn't do much good. I've see the records – he just went right on experimenting…"

"No, it didn't do much in the end except rob Raines of his beloved position as a licensed and official medical practitioner," Sydney admitted. "But that was enough to keep him from being able to continue some of the out-of-house projects he'd been working on at the same time – from using his position at the Centre to acquire privileges and experimental subjects in State Hospitals. Preventing him from being able to do that anymore probably saved quite a few lives in the long run. His loss of privileges also meant that I had grounds from which to protect Jarod all the more from his experimentation – except on those occasions when they could lure me away from the Centre to attend seminars and conferences. And as soon as I figured out what was going on in my absence, I stopped taking advantage of all these events being thrown at me all the time – I rarely even took vacations anymore."

"Did he ever know it was you…"

"Oh, I made sure I let him know that I was part of it," Sydney told him proudly. "He hated me even more than before after that — he had always resented that I had been given Jarod and not he. I think that my knowing so many of his secrets also made him afraid of me to a certain extent during the last few years. I knew where most of his skeletons were buried in the mainframe – and I had the kind of associates whom I could convince to easily disinter them and cause trouble if he gave me too much grief." He patted his protégé on the shoulder and pushed himself to his feet to head off to the bathroom the moment the burning pain in the knee from resuming the task of bearing weight lessened. "I'd be willing to guess that the greater share of the projects and data having his name on them have been ending up in the 'burn this' stack, right?"

Kevin nodded with grim satisfaction. "Most of it is either redundant or so ethically challenged to make the results suspect."

"Then if you see Raines was involved in the work, just throw it out by default," Sydney suggested. "ANYTHING to lessen the load and get through those damned boxes any quicker. And the sooner we disassociate ourselves from anything having to do with that man, the better anyway."

"Sydney?" Miss Parker's voice called from the front of the house.

"Back here, Parker," he called back and then limped toward the bathroom. "I'll be right out."

"What did you do, just let him loose?" Miss Parker asked from the kitchen door, and then smiled at Kevin when he answered with a grin and a nod. "Tell me," she asked in a slightly conspiratorial tone, "how is he today?"

"Tired," Kevin answered immediately. "He said he didn't sleep well last night – and things didn't exactly go smoothly this morning…"

Miss Parker nodded. "Jarod told me that might be the case. Listen — I'm going to want you to give him one of his old pain pills when it's time for everybody to turn in," she told him. She then hastened to explain when Kevin gave her a startled look that threatened to argue with her. "He needs to rest, and if he's having nightmares, he might need some help resting until Jarod can get here and start working with him more intensely…"

"Jarod isn't going to need to work with me, Parker," Sydney interrupted as he came out of the bathroom door. "There's nothing to be done."

A quick glance from storm-grey eyes had Kevin deciding to duck back out into the kitchen and beyond to let his mentor argue his point with Miss Parker. Personally, he agreed with Jarod about helping Sydney rest one way or the other – and HE didn't want to have to weather the argument when he was too tired to fight the battle. He also agreed with Miss Parker that Sydney needed to talk to someone — someone who could help him find his balance again. If that someone needed to be Jarod…

"Sydney," she began, shaking her head. "You know that you need to talk to someone…"

"I thought that was why I was talking with YOU," Sydney complained bitterly. "You wanted in, remember?"

"Stop it – it's not going to work," Miss Parker told him in a flat and calm voice. "I know you just want to push this back under the carpet, and I know it isn't working – and it isn't my fault in either case." She looked at him and could easily see the signs of fatigue. "You look like hell, Syd – didn't you sleep well last night?"

"No, I didn't sleep well," he retorted. "The last time I slept well, I was too drunk not to." He limped over to where he could grasp one crutch and put it under his arm. "I don't want to talk about it – not tonight."

"Kevin said that things didn't go smoothly this morning," she remarked, standing deliberately in his way so that he couldn't easily move around her to leave the room. "What's going on?"

"Parker…"

"Just tell me what happened this morning," she sighed. "It's a pretty simple question…"

"I found out that our two lovebirds weren't being careful," Sydney admitted at last. "I had to step down fairly heavily just to make sure that they started taking responsibility for their actions – and that Deb stopped being starry-eyed and took care of making sure they used contraceptives."

Miss Parker stared for a moment and then shook her head. "God, Syd, you probably embarrassed the hell out of Deb. That kind of discussion is probably best carried out between a girl and a trusted female friend — not a grandfather! Why didn't you ask me to talk to her?"

He stared at her for a moment in surprise. "It's MY house they're living in, Parker – and if she comes up pregnant, its ME that Broots will look to for answers as to why I didn't step in and stop things…"

"He'll probably climb all over the both of us, Sydney," she nodded. "But you still could have left the sensitive stuff to me, you know…"

Sydney gave her a guilty glance, and then shrugged. "You're working," he finally offered by way of explanation. "You don't need that much more on your plate. I should be able to tend the home fires without THAT much assistance…"

"Is Deb still speaking to you?"

"Yeah," he said slowly. "but I had to go upstairs and smooth some feathers after I guess I pulled my 'Inquisitor' number on her…"

"Oh great," Miss Parker groaned, then looked at her surrogate father in exasperation. "Can't you see what's happening, Syd? You're over-reacting – this should have been nothing to fly THAT far off the handle about."

Sydney looked at her for a long moment, then backed down. He found his way back to the daybed couch and sat down slowly again. "I know," he said unhappily. "I just…" He looked up at her helplessly. "It just happened."

Miss Parker moved between the daybed couch and the coffee table and sat down on amid the file folders facing her old friend. "And that's why I want you to let Jarod help you when he gets back," she told him gently. "I'm here, and God knows that I'll listen to you and try to help – but Jarod knows how to help you so much better than I do."

"Jarod is going to be plenty busy helping you put the Centre back on a reasonable track," Sydney protested – and he could see from the expression in her face that his protestations were essentially futile. "Parker, be reasonable…"

"You be reasonable, damn it," she shot back. "You're struggling with something bigger than you are – and more than that, some of what is bothering you most is something that only Jarod will be able to help you resolve. I can listen to your stories and help you talk your way through some of the worst of the memories, but only Jarod will be able to deal with the way you're blaming yourself for things that have to do with him personally."

"Parker…"

"Deb needs you stable so that she can hang onto you – and right now, you're in practically the same boat that she is. You're both having nightmares about the things that happened to you – were done to you – but yours are nightmares that you've been suppressing for half a century. You're both acting without thinking things through properly – and you're both tending to fly off the handle far too easily. Look at yourself, Sydney, and tell me I'm wrong."

But she wasn't wrong, and he knew it. She was far too observant for a mere layperson – always had been. "You're not wrong," he admitted reluctantly.

"Then stop fighting me," she pleaded. "Let Kevin give you one of your old pain pills tonight before you go to bed – you know as well as I do that it'll knock you flat and put you to sleep for the entire night so that at least you won't be exhausted tomorrow morning. Tomorrow's going to be a big day, with Jarod coming home – you aren't going to want to be collapsing from exhaustion, are you?"

Sydney gave Miss Parker a sideways glance. "I didn't have you pegged as a fast-talking mother hen until just now," he commented wryly. "All right – I'll let Kevin give me a pain pill before bed. But…" he held up a restraining forefinger, "…no trips down memory lane tonight, please. I'm not really in the mood, nor do I have the stamina to go through the entire gamut of emotions tonight."

Miss Parker put her arm on his shoulder and squeezed gently. "OK – but just for tonight. You're still going to let me in, right?" Sydney looked down and nodded slowly in agreement, and she leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. "Then I'll let you off the hook for tonight – maybe even for tomorrow night too. Temporary respite."

There was the sound of the garage door opening, and then Deb's voice sounded in the kitchen greeting Kevin. "Why don't you go see if I've left any feathers that still need smoothing," Sydney suggested with a reassuring expression. "I'll be out in a minute, after I give you a chance to talk to Deb and Kevin without my hanging over you or making things awkward."

She chuckled and kissed his cheek this time. "Aren't you glad that you didn't have to try to counsel or control ME when I was a horny little teenager?"

"Are you kidding?" he gave her a shaky smile of gratitude. "I think I'd have locked you away in a convent school."

Miss Parker arose shaking her head. "Poor Deb! I'll go see how she's faring. Give me a minute."

"Take your time," he told her, scooting back on the couch until his back was well supported. "I'm in no hurry." He leaned his head back against the cushioned back as she walked away and ran his mind over what she'd told him. She was right – he was in as bad a shape as Deb herself was, and needed help getting his own head screwed back on straight every bit as much as Deb ever had. Maybe letting Jarod work with him – going through the memories and, worse, the self-accusations that had erupted louder and more caustically than ever before. There again, Parker had been right – so much of what was the most painful needed Jarod's direct intervention – something he'd often wished for and virtually given up on ever having his protégé's willing participation.

Yes, they had talked about things when Jarod had first returned to Delaware – gone over quite a bit of the more specific and egregious failings he had been guilty of over the years – and laid most of those to rest. What was left, however, were the general things – trivial details pertaining to his attitude and treatment of Jarod overall as a subject rather than as a human being that had characterized over twenty years' worth of association and mentorship. There hadn't been time to get into all that before he'd been shot and everything else had started going to hell.

God, he was tired!

Ethan stood up and raised his wine glass. "A toast – to Jarod, who put this family back together piece by piece, and who now leaves us to put his own family together at last."

The rest of the family all raised their wineglasses in response, and a collective, "Here! Here!" resounded before all took a sip.

"So, big brother," Jay said, reaching out and snagging the platter of meat before his younger brother could even get sat down again and beat him to it, "When's the wedding day?"

"Not sure yet," Jarod answered as he dished up mashed potatoes for Ginger and then for himself. "A lot will depend on what the situation is at the Centre – whether we'll have the time to just relax and plan something like that, or whether it will have to wait until we put out more fires again."

"I still don't know how you can stand going back to work at the same place that treated you like a virtual slave," Emily remarked sharply. "I always thought you swore you'd never go anywhere near it again."

"You have to admit that going back for a visit, like you did this past summer, was one thing," Nathan agreed, "and going back there for good is another entirely."

"Well," Jarod responded easily, "back when I was swearing up and down that I'd never go back there again, I hadn't figured out that I was in love in anybody back there – much less found out that I had a child or that my somebody was in love with me too."

"Still," Emily insisted, taking the bowl of buttered vegetables from her mother and giving a helping of them to her son before taking her own, "to WORK for them…"

"I'm not working for or with the same people who were the causes of my nightmares, Sis," Jarod reminded her with a sharp look. "They're out of the picture completely now. This is an entirely different organization, running by different rules and with an entirely new agenda. Yes, some of the faces are the same – but in completely different roles and with completely different responsibilities."

"We all learned that some of our assumptions needed adjustment while Missy was here," Margaret spoke up finally. "I'm going with him to see just how many of the others need adjustment too. It would be nice to think that we don't ever have to fear the Centre finding us again…"

"You don't," Jarod insisted in a tone of complaint. "You already know that."

"It's still a very new concept, you have to admit," Jay reminded his older brother somberly. "Even when we weren't running or hiding out, we were keeping an eagle-eye over our shoulders…"

"I never felt that you folks were doing that all that much to stay under cover," Nathan complained gently. "And all of you hardly ever mentioned the Centre in my presence before…"

"Before Dad died and I went back East," Jarod finished for him. "I know that was how most of us felt — how much the Centre was just always there in the backs of our minds like a mugger ready to jump out and take us down. For what it's worth, THAT'S why I went back there in the first place — to put an end to having to do that once and for all — remember? I just happened to find a lot more than I bargained for once I got there."

"It's just…" Emily started, then blushed. "I just wish that you weren't in such a rush to leave. You see, Nathan and I have an important announcement to make."

Jarod turned astonished chocolate eyes on his sister. "What do you mean, an announcement?"

Nathan reached out and took his wife's hand tightly. "Em and I are going to have another baby," he said without any further ado.

"That's GREAT!" Jay's face cracked open in a huge grin. "When?"

"Mid-March," Emily answered, her face glowing with happiness. "I'm really hoping for a little girl this time."

"What do you think about this, Sammy?" Ethan asked his nephew with a smile on his face. "You get to be a big brother now."

"Yeah!" the little boy preened beneath his uncle's gaze. "And Mommy says that I get to help once the baby gets here."

"You'll be a lot of help for your Mom," Jarod said surely. "And you are SO lucky to get to be a big brother, you know."

"Another toast," Ethan said, rising again. "To our family as it grows and gets new members – both here AND in Delaware."

"Here! Here!" Again the wine glasses around the table went into the air in answer, and then clinked together before another sip was taken.

As if by mutual agreement, the rest of the dinner conversation had little to do with the sadness of leave-taking and much more about the happy news of the pending arrival of a new child. Then it was time for dessert, and Emily brought a present out from the kitchen when she carried in the cake. Ginger's eyes got huge and round when her Auntie put the cake down on the table and carried the box over and handed it to her. "This is for you, Sprite," she said gently, crouching by the girl's chair at the table, "a going-away present from all of us here. We just want you to know that we're going to miss you – a lot."

"Yeah!" Sammy chimed in. "Open the box, Ginger!"

"Can I?" Ginger asked her father.

"Of course," Jarod told her with a smile. "Let's see what's inside."

Ginger looked at her Auntie again, and then set about very carefully opening the box – moving the ribbon aside and pulling each piece of tape away from the decorative paper so that it didn't tear. Finally she could slip the box inside from its paper wrapping, which Emily took charge of while the girl lifted the top from the box. She moved the tissue paper inside aside and then gaped. Inside was a beautiful dress of pink chiffon with sequins defining a decorative pattern on the bodice that made it look like something a princess would wear. Ginger stared at the dress, her mouth open but no words coming out, and then looked up at her Auntie again.

"Very soon," Emily told her niece gently, "your Daddy is going to get married. And when he does, I wanted to make sure you had the most beautiful dress in the world to wear."

"T'ank-oo, Aunt Emmie," the little girl finally managed in an awe-struck whisper and reached out to give her Auntie a very tight hug.

"Oh, sweetie, you're so very welcome," Emily replied, returning the tight hug. She closed her eyes as the child's arms remained around her neck. "I am so going to miss having my Mouse in the house."

"Me not a Mouse, Aunt Emmie," Ginger protested with a smile, this being a favorite word game she played with her Auntie. "Me a Sprite."

"You'll always be a Mouse to me," Emily told her, giving the child's father a knowing look.

"I honestly don't think she'll be that quiet for much longer," Jarod grinned. "Maybe you should start calling her Magpie."

"Daddy!" Ginger's indignant cry made the adults around the table all chuckle heartily, although with bittersweet happiness. Ginger had become a part of the family — when she left with her father, she would leave a hole as well.

Tyler smiled and raised his water glass in a salute to the lady across the table from him. He'd decided against fast food as a venue for a dinner date somewhere over the course of the day, and so after he had picked Xing-Li up at her apartment, he had driven them to a Denny's on the outskirts of Dover. "Here's to a pleasant evening and good conversation," he pronounced carefully.

The pretty Chinese woman across from him raised her water glass in an answering gesture and then sipped at the ice-cold liquid. "Here, here," she agreed quietly.

Tyler folded his hands on the table in front of himself and gave his dinner companion a steady look. "Tell me about yourself," he asked. "What do you do when you're home alone? What do you like to do? What kind of music…"

She blinked. "I write letters to some of my friends," she began shyly.

"In China?"

"And in Hong Kong – some of them live there now," she nodded. "I read…"

"What do you read?"

She blushed and found something very interesting in the weave of the tablecloth in front of her. "Some romances," she admitted in a very soft voice, and then looked up. "What about you?"

Now it was Tyler's turn to blink in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"What do YOU do during your free time?"

"Well," Tyler began, his smile growing slightly, "I sometimes take my car out to the race track on Sunday afternoons and race against some of the other guys…"

"Are you your own mechanic?" she tipped her head slightly with eyes bright with interest.

"You bet!" he replied quickly. "I've been nursing that little baby along now for a good number of years – and I even win a race with her every once in a while." He grinned at her expression of interest. "Are you a racing fan?"

"I know very little about it," Xing-Li admitted, "except that I think it must be very exciting to go so very fast."

He smiled indulgently. "I don't know – riding a horse in a race is far more exciting than driving a car. There's just something about the wind in your face, and the feel of all that muscle and power under you, and the idea that the two of you are one."

"I've never even been near a horse in my life," Xing-Li told him, her eyes now sparkling. "I've only seen them in movies."

"When I was living with my uncle in Texas while I was a teenager, I think I spent three quarters of my time on horseback – riding fence lines and herding cattle…"

"So you were a real cowboy? I thought they only existed in the movies and on television nowadays."

"There's a lot of need for folks to do things with horses out West," he told her.

"After that, did you go to school to become a businessman?" she asked as soon as the waiter had delivered both of their salads and left them alone again.

Tyler chuckled and shook his head. "No, I did just about everything a man could possibly do to survive, and I traveled through a lot of countryside doing it. I milked cows and mucked out barns in Wisconsin, I drove truck in California, I worked as a security guard in Chicago. And when I wasn't working, I was going to the local schools, piecing together a Liberal Arts degree and then finally a degree in biology."

The almond eyes were wide and astonished. "How did you end up here, then?" she asked, leaning her chin into her hand.

"I learned martial arts from my uncle – who had a black belt and ran a small dojo in El Paso. Anyway, I heard about the Centre and their need for security men, and I came to apply for a job as a sweeper." He nodded in the face of her look of shock. "Luckily for me, as it turned out, the job required proficiency in firearms – and with a punctured eardrum, I couldn't stand the noise. So they found a place for me downstairs in the morgue. That's where Miss Parker found me on the day the Tower blew up. She gave me this job a couple of days after we all got out."

"So you haven't been an executive all that long then," Xing-Li exclaimed. "But I thought… It always seemed that you were so comfortable with the job…"

"Most of what Miss Parker wants me to do is run interference for her," he said with a shrug. "And for some reason, she seems to think that I can broker deals for her one minute, help her read through contracts and see where we stand to either make a profit or get run to the cleaners, depending on the wording."

"I guess I just didn't expect you to be so much like me," Xing-Li said with a shy smile. "You reached down into the clerical pool and gave me this advanced and complex job much the way Miss Parker gave you yours."

"I hadn't really thought of it that way," Tyler admitted with a nod after thinking about it for a while, "but you're right. We both kinda got rescued from the mundane existence we'd each been relegated to and now have very different and interesting lives as a result."

"And you work on your car and win races with it on Sundays," she added with a smile.

"And you read romance novels and write letters to friends," he added to that. "Nothing else?"

Xing-Li blushed behind a demure hand. "I do needlework," she told him shyly. "At home, my grandmother was a very respected artist with her needlework – and before my father sold me, my mother was insisting that I sit with my grandmother everyday and try to learn her craft. So now, when I get homesick, I do embroidery – the traditional patterns and stitches that my grandmother taught me."

"Do you get homesick often?" Tyler asked gently, his fork full of salad floating in front of his face waiting for an answer.

"I did for a very long time," she answered honestly. "Especially when the girls I had come to Delaware with started to disappear. All I could think of was that we wouldn't have to be so afraid if we'd stayed in Asia. Mr. Lyle…" She shuddered.

"I am SO glad that he never got to you – or Mei-Chiang," Tyler bent forward earnestly. "And I'm glad that you're here, now. Do you still get homesick?"

She shook her head. "I haven't since Miss Parker became the Chairman – not really." She blushed. "Well, maybe a little on the day that Mei-Chiang moved in with Sam. That meant that I was alone in that apartment building. But now…"

"Now you have at least one neighbor," Tyler nodded, "although I think Dr. Mitchell will be moving back into her own home soon – as soon as she feels certain that she doesn't need to worry about that man that attacked her getting loose."

"I'll miss her," Xing-Li said with a touch of sadness, "but now there is the new girl – Crystal. She's very shy – and very alone."

"I don't want to talk shop anymore," Tyler said, reaching out and touching the back of her left hand as it rested on the table. "We both spend enough time at the Centre – let's enjoy being OFF the clock."

"I think I can do that," she replied, touched.

Xing-Li smiled at her dinner companion. So her boss had come from fairly humble beginnings and had only recently been promoted at the Centre. Knowing this made her feel a little more comfortable with the idea of his interest in her outside of work. He was an interesting person in a very scattered and very American kind of way – even to the point of having been a real cowboy!

For his part, Tyler was thoroughly enchanted. He'd let her turn the tables on him and get him talking about himself, knowing that by being open and honest about his own background, he was preparing the ground to find out more about her. He'd never been in a position where he actually had to put a lady at ease to the extent he had to work with Xing-Li, and he was finding the idea of gaining her trust genuinely addictive.

He was glad that he'd run this potential relationship past Miss Parker already. He already knew that he was going to want to see more of Xing-Li – hopefully by the end of the evening, it wouldn't be quite so hard to convince her that she wouldn't mind seeing more of him either.

Miss Parker leaned against the doorjamb and looked around the bedroom that had once been hers many, many years ago. The cleaning crew that had finished making the whole house ready for a family's habitation had brought a new canopy for the bed and new frilly curtains for the windows. Remembering the clowns on the nightstand lamp in Ginger's room in California, she had found several other clown accessories for the room, and in a net halfway up the wall in a corner near the closet was an assortment of stuffed animals and dolls that would give her plenty of friends to play with until she had little girlfriends of her own from school to play with.

She brought up the memory of that little face as she had handed her back to Jarod just before getting on the plane and began stumbling through a disjointed prayer that her little girl would be much happier in this room than she had been.

"Mommy?" Davy's voice sounded from behind her in the hallway and made her turn.

"What, little man?"

"What time will they be here again?"

She sighed and put out an arm so she could draw him into her side. "Sometime in the afternoon," she told him gently. "A lot will depend on what time the plane leaves from California. Remember how long it took for us to get home?"

"Yeah." Davy remembered the trip well. "It was morning when we left, and it was almost nighttime by the time we got home again."

"Daddy said that he'd try to make it so that they were in the air by nine o'clock his time tomorrow morning," she informed him. "That means noon our time – and it's nearly six hours from California to here."

"Are Kevin and Deb and Grandpa going to come with us to the airport and get them when they get here?"

"I don't think so," she smiled down at her son. "Grandpa might come, maybe – but then again, a lot will depend on what time they get here. Grandpa's therapy machine needs to go until almost six, you know…"

"Is Daddy going to work at the Centre with you now?"

"Yes," she answered, and then patted him on the shoulder. "Why all the questions all of a sudden?"

"I don't know," he shrugged his shoulders. "It just seems that I've been waiting for him to come back home for so long – and now that he's almost here, life seems to have changed so much. I'm just curious…"

"About what?"

"We're going to be a real family now, aren't we?" Davy asked in a small voice. "Daddy's not going to go away again, and Ginger will be with us from now on, right?"

"Yes, baby, we're going to be a real family now – with Daddy not going away for such a long time again and Ginger staying with us all the time. Does that bother you?"

"No," Davy answered truthfully. "It's just that I keep waiting for it to be a dream that I'll wake up from someday. I know you and Grandpa and Uncle Broots already were family – but…"

"I know what you mean," she told him understandingly. "When I was a little girl, and my Mommy had gone away forever, I can remember wishing that I could have my whole family back. This will be your first time with your whole family HERE – even your Grandma Maggie is coming with Daddy and Ginger, you know…"

"I know…"

"YOU need to think about getting ready for bed, Mister," she said with a slightly more energetic tone. "You're going to have a big day tomorrow – you have a softball game in the afternoon, and then your Daddy gets home – and you need your rest."

"I'm not really tired, Mommy…"

"I know you're not right now," Miss Parker ruffled his hair. "But you'll be glad you had the extra sleep later on."

Davy heaved a sigh and turned in the direction of his new room, which he still hadn't finished decorating yet. His head was just too full of plans and ideas to shut down easily – he knew that he'd just lay in bed thinking about all the different ways his life changed permanently in the next twenty-four hours.

Miss Parker watched Davy tromp listlessly to his room, understanding the excitement and expectations that would be keeping her son awake would most likely be keeping HER awake most of the night as well. She turned and extinguished the lights in Ginger's bedroom and closed the door with a sigh.

Tomorrow, she told herself silently. Tomorrow, she'd be tucking her daughter in as well as her son – and she'd have her love back at her side. Tomorrow, life DID change.

Again.

"Time to go — don't forget your present, Sprite," Jarod cautioned as he stood up and stretched. It was past Ginger's bedtime, but she'd enjoyed playing cars with Sammy for a change — the little boy had finally figured out he was losing his playmate and had actually behaved himself with her for a change.

Ginger obediently put all of the toys that she'd been playing with back in the plastic storage box where they belonged, then went looking for Bear in her dining chair where she'd left him guarding her princess dress. "Me got it, Daddy," she chirped as she brought both Bear and her box to her father.

Jarod stopped suddenly and then looked down at his daughter. "Say goodbye, Sprite," he told her gently. "You'll be leaving tomorrow and probably not seeing your Auntie and Uncles again for a while."

Ginger looked up at the faces of the adults that had become so important to her world, her eyes suddenly very big, very round and very sad. "Bye," she said in a very tiny voice.

This was something completely new to her. She had been removed from a total of three homes — three sets of parents — and never had she had the opportunity, much less the desire, to tell any of them goodbye. Leaving, for her, had been a forever thing — something that, once done, was never undone.

"C'mere, Mouse," Nathan called finally, and Ginger handed Bear and her box to her father to keep for her while she obeyed. The tall, blonde man crouched down and gathered his little niece close. "You be good for your Daddy, now, won't you?"

"Uh-huh," Ginger nodded against her Uncle's shoulder.

The moment Nathan had released her, Jay swooped down and caught her under the arms and swung her up into the air, making her squeak with surprise and delight. "And you take good care of your Grandma Maggie while she's staying with you, OK? I'll be counting on you…"

Ginger stretched back a bit to get a good look at the man who was her Daddy — but wasn't. "I promise," she swore solemnly, shooting a glance over at where her Grandma was hugging her Auntie goodbye while her Daddy shook hands with both of his younger brothers.

Then Ethan was holding his hands out for her, and she went to him and snuggled right down. "Me miss you, Ee-fan," she said very softly.

"You tell your Mommy hello from me, and give her this kiss." Ethan kissed her very gently on the cheek. "Promise me?"

Ginger nodded solemnly again, and then Ethan put her down. Emily walked over to her and readily accepted the arms around her waist that had become her niece's gesture of affection. "We'll see you when your Daddy gets married," she promised the little girl. "And until then, you take good care of yourself and Bear too."

"I will, Aunt Emmie." Ginger felt her father capture her one hand and give her back her Bear into the other. "G'bye." Her eyes caught at Sammy, standing behind his father's leg. "'Bye, Sammy."

"'Bye, Ginger," the little boy said softly. "'Bye, Grandma."

Jarod called out another set of good-byes of his own and then led Ginger from his sister's house, his mother walking sedately at his side. "What time do you want me ready to go?" Margaret asked, tucking her hand into her son's arm as they walked along.

"If we're ready to leave at eight, then we can be in the air by nine — which means we'll be almost on the ground again by six in the evening Eastern time. Do you want me to call you?" Jarod asked.

"No," Margaret shook her head. "I have a perfectly good alarm clock. Give me a call when you're ready to drive to the airport — but I'll be ready to leave at eight."

Jarod and Ginger paused in front of Margaret's house. "We'll see you in the morning, then," he said, bending to give her a kiss on the cheek.

"Sleep well, Sprite," she told her granddaughter as she bent to kiss her. "I'll see you in the morning."

"G'nite, Gamma," Ginger chirped and then watched Margaret head up her walk toward her house.

"Me no like g'byes," she commented as much to herself and Bear as anyone else.

"I know, Sprite," Jarod found himself agreeing with his daughter's opinion more than he'd expected. "Good-byes are no fun at all — but the hellos when you see them again will be extra nice."

"Promise?" Ginger looked up trustingly at her father.

"I promise, sweetheart," Jarod said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. "Just wait – you'll see."

"What?"

"It isn't even late at night," Jarod chided her gently.

"I'm just getting impatient," Miss Parker told him, putting her hairbrush down and carrying the cordless receiver over to her bed. "I want you home."

"I'll be there in less than twenty-four hours, Missy," he promised, rolling over and laying down on his bed on his back, one arm behind his head and the other hand holding the phone to his ear. "I'm getting impatient too — even though it was hard to say good-bye to everyone tonight. Em and Nathan announced that they're having another baby — due sometime in March, I believe…"

"I'll have to call Em and congratulate her," Miss Parker said in surprise. "I'm just sorry that they have to live all the way on the other side of the country."

"Em gave Sprite the prettiest dress — and told her it was for the wedding," Jarod announced with a smile on his lips at the thought. "And I've been bugged several times for a date. We'll have to start thinking about that pretty soon."

"As soon as you're home safe and sound, we'll start planning," she promised. "What color is Ginger's dress?"

"Pink — and it's really gorgeous, Missy. Is the jet on the ground here?"

"I got a call from the pilot at about eight my time to say that he was there. He'll have everything all fueled up and ready to go by about seven-thirty tomorrow morning — so you can get there anytime after that…" She ran her fingers through her hair and pulled it back from her face. "The sooner, the better, as far as I'm concerned."

"How's Sydney tonight?"

"Sleeping, I'd imagine," she informed him. "You were right — he didn't sleep well last night and he's a lot less than stable right now. I had to browbeat him a little bit, but he finally agreed to take the pain pill so he could get some rest — AND to accept your help in sorting through things to get his head screwed back on straight. He's fighting a mammoth case of the guilts, you know…"

"I'm not surprised," Jarod admitted. "We talked through a lot, but we didn't exactly get a chance to really settle EVERYthing. There are a lot of little things, I suppose — they do add up after a while." He thought for a bit. "Just how unsteady is he?"

"Hair-trigger temper, over-reacting to troubling situations, inability to sleep well…"

"Wonderful." Jarod's voice was under-impressed. "Something tells me that I'm going to have plenty to do without even setting foot at the Centre for a while.

"That's fine with me, Jarod," she told him firmly. "He's done so much to hold us all together lately — he deserves to get the lion's share of the attention for as long as he needs it. Besides, things seem to be calming down a bit now that most of the military men who were pushing us so hard to get things restarted again have been arrested for conspiracy and all kinds of other charges."

"I heard about that on the news tonight," Jarod commented slowly. "You folks seem to have things pretty well under control."

"I don't know that WE did anything," she exclaimed. "We just put the bug in a single man's ear — and he took care of it for us. Considering the way our luck has been running lately, this feels like it resolved just too damned easily. I keep waiting for the other shoe to fall."

"Maybe your luck is changing," he remarked gently. "God knows, you deserve it…"

"We can only hope. Right now, all I know is that I want you HERE," she said in a soft and vehement tone. "I'm tired of not having your face in my face when I wake up in the morning — and I want to get to know this little girl who is to be my daughter a whole lot better."

"Hang on, Parker — it's just one more day…"

"One damned LONG day, Pez-breath."

"Yeah, I know," he agreed. "And I get to spend most of it cooped up in the company jet."

"I think I'm going to be spending most of it over at Sydney's, trying to keep him from losing his cool with Kevin and Deb again. We'll eat there tomorrow night, and then go home afterwards."

"That sounds good to me," Jarod sighed. "I love you."

"I love you too. I wish you were here already."

He started to chuckle. "You never were very good at practicing patience, were you?"

"Not when it came to things like this," she admitted, her chuckles joining his.

"No wonder you had an ulcer."

"No, THAT was because you kept giving me these incredibly vague and disturbing clues to things, and then not even saying goodbye before you hung up," she complained.

"Are you hinting?" he asked slyly.

"Not in the least," she answered haughtily. "Just get your ass home where it belongs, Jarod."

"I'm working on it, Missy — I'm working on it."

"Good night, Jarod."

"Good night. Sleep well."

"Not tonight, Wonder-boy. But thanks for the good wishes…"

"G'nite, Parker." Jarod hung up the phone and turned off the lamp on the nightstand.

He was ready to go home. It was time.

Feedback, please:


	23. Changing Gears

Resolutions – 23

Changing Gears

by MMB

David Lawler tossed the papers he'd been reading for the past several hours down on the couch next to him and yawned widely. He rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses and then got up to stretch. The clock on his mantle chimed softly, and he counted the chimes and then swore softly when he realized that he'd been reading most of the night and would have to be at work in a little less than three hours.

But the reading he'd been doing had been absorbing. This Pretender Project that the Centre had been involved in years ago was an audacious and outrageous plan to take advantage of the incredibly high-powered minds of a very select group of young people who would be isolated from mainstream life and their every effort controlled from there on in. Included in the packet had been a list of names for eight of the children involved in the testing — given names only, no last names. It seemed the Centre was more than happy to steal these children's very identities in order to make them completely dependent up on the Centre and its operatives for their daily needs.

First among these children had been a boy named Jarod — and as time went on, all mention of any other children than Jarod faded from the records. But of Jarod there was ample mention — the number and variety of projects, studies, SIMs and experiments that he had either carried out or been a part of gave new meaning to the term 'lab rat.' From all indications, the Centre had held Jarod prisoner from 1963 until his escape in 1995 — when he would have been approximately 37 years of age. A retrieval team had been formed immediately to recapture the escapee at the order of the Chairman, Mr. Parker — a team that had been led by a much younger Miss Parker. The search, which from some of the reports had been intense at times, lasted for nearly seven years before it had abruptly been shelved after nearly a year of no contact or information concerning the escaped man's whereabouts. That had been nearly seven years ago.

Miss Parker had become the latest public sweetheart after her heart-wrenching and truly courageous descent into the sublevels of a damaged Centre to rescue workers trapped below ground. That she would have willingly participated in a manhunt to return a certified genius to a status of prisoner and virtual slavery was certain to rock the reading public who now called her a heroine — IF he could get solid substantiation to back up these allegations.

Then there was the question of the kinds of projects that the Centre had been forcing Jarod to be a part of…

He shook his head and stumbled into his messy kitchen to fumble his way through cleaning the coffeemaker of the previous day's brew and getting it perking another pot of liquid ignition. Other than that it was a think tank and that it had been the victim of a bombing, very little was known about the Centre itself. There was the suggestion that the Centre was a research and development firm with whom the Pentagon had several on-going contracts — but again, it was only an allegation with nothing to back it up as yet.

Lawler drooped into one of the kitchen chairs and dragged a small legal pad and a pen over. There were a number of things that HE could do while waiting for his unidentified source to cough up more information on this fascinating story. He started by noting the names of people he needed to check out: William Raines, Lyle Parker, Charles Parker, Sydney Green, Lazlo Broots, Agande M'tumbo, Otamo Ngawe, Major Charles Russell — certainly there would be publicly-available records concerning the Americans at least. M'tumbo and Ngawe had been members of an international organization known as 'the Triumvirate' — apparently almost as shadowy as the Centre itself. Interpol might be a source to check up on THEM. And there was the question of military contracts to follow up with a representative from the Appropriations Committee.

He scratched his head and dropped the pen tiredly onto the pad and turned impatient eyes to the burbling coffeemaker. He knew he had just scratched the surface of something big — the kind of story that could make or break a reporter's career. IF it held up to research, that is.

Deb paused as she passed Kevin's bedroom door, but remembering her promise walked determinedly forward and then down the stairs in search of her grandfather. The subtle horror of her early morning nightmare had caught her by surprise, and she had found herself unprepared to even begin to deal with the idea of Kevin and her father AND her grandfather rejecting her because she was pregnant. She desperately needed reassurance, and she needed it NOW.

She paused at the bottom on of the stairs as she saw the slight Japanese man in the living room raise his head and look in her direction and then nod. For the first time since she'd come home and awakened early enough in the morning to find him still in attendance, she didn't feel nervous beneath his steady gaze. "Mr. Ikeda," she said softly.

"Deborah-san," he returned with a bow. "Is everything all right?"

Deb pulled her bathrobe a little tighter around her body and moved into the archway. "Do you have kids, Mr. Ikeda?"

The ninja shook his head. "Regrettably, my wife and I were unable to have children," he answered easily. "Why?"

"I just…" She shrugged. "Never mind."

"You are troubled about something," he observed in a soft voice. "Is there anything I can do to help you?"

"It was just a nightmare," she explained lamely. "I'm being silly."

"Not necessarily," he responded gently. "A nightmare can often tell you where your mind is troubled. After all, a nightmare without fear is nothing but a dream."

"All my dreams are nightmares lately," Deb told him sourly. "When do they stop?"

"When whatever it is that is troubling you has been settled, one way or the other." He gestured at the couch not far away. "Do you know what troubles you?"

"Yeah," she told him, following his suggestion and finding a seat on the edge of the couch. "Just about everything nowadays."

"Is there nothing in your life that you can trust?"

"I don't know," she said plaintively. "Everything's changing around me so fast."

"Then the only thing you can trust in is the fact that everything is changing," Ikeda told her in a very matter-of-fact tone. "Taking that one step further should tell you that whatever it is that troubles you now will therefore also change in time, becoming less troubling. There is comfort to be found in that, if you are willing to see it."

Deb blinked — it was a very different way of looking at things, but it made a crazy sort of sense. "I suppose," she allowed very slowly, and then shook her head. "But it doesn't help me in the here and now."

Ikeda shook his head with a gentle smile. "But Deborah-san, what problem do you have right now, in this very moment? Are you in danger?"

"No, but…"

"Are you hungry, thirsty, cold?"

"No…"

"Then what problem do you have right now?"

"I'm afraid," she said softly.

"Of what?"

"That I've made a huge mistake and that Kevin and Daddy and Grandpa will…"

"What others will do or think is a future problem, not a problem in the here and now," Ikeda observed firmly. "When you think about what might be, or what might not be, you are sending your mind forward into a time that doesn't exist yet — it is only a dream, an illusion." He watched Green-san's pretty blossom of a granddaughter trying to bend her mind around what was to him such simple wisdom. He spoke again to remake the point. "And this mistake you speak of, it is in the past?"

"Yes, but…"

"Then nothing you do now can change what has happened. If you want to talk about the here and now, do you suffer now because of what you did? Are you in pain NOW?"

"No…"

"How do you know that you have made a mistake then?"

"Because I might be pregnant NOW," Deb burst out. "That's a here and now thing, isn't it?"

Ikeda's eyes widened briefly, and then he nodded. "Yes, it is. Do you know for sure?"

"No…"

"And if you aren't pregnant — is what you did still a mistake?"

Deb stared at the man. He was leading her through a completely different path of thought than her grandfather would have — but she was finding it just as effective. "Yes, because I took a risk unnecessarily."

"Have you learned from this mistake?" he asked gently.

"Yes," she admitted softly.

"Then the mistake served its purpose, whether your problem in the here and now is an illusory one or a real one. You have changed so that it won't happen again. You have already dealt with the past. All you need to do is to quit borrowing from the future."

"What about Kevin and Daddy?"

"What about them?"

"What if they get angry at me — stop caring…"

"Deborah-san," Ikeda said very gently, "Even anger is a temporary emotion — it is born, lives a while, then fades. Worrying about the reaction others might have to your condition isn't going to change what will happen — they will react as they will react. That is not a here and now 'thing', as you put it."

Deb stared at him. "Then how do I prepare myself for possibilities?"

"You don't."

Her mouth dropped open. "What do you mean, I don't?"

"You simply respond to what comes to you in each moment — for no matter how much you might prepare, when reality finally arrives, it will never be as you have foreseen it."

"But… I can't do that…"

"Of course you can — but remember, I didn't say it would be easy," Ikeda told her with a half-smile. "However, I know for a fact that keeping your mind in the here and now will give you a measure of peace between the now in which you're living and the now that is to come. And I'd be willing to bet that much of the fear that haunts your dreams and turns them into nightmares is a fear that comes borrowed from a future that doesn't exist — from illusion. Remember that, even as you begin to fear, and you can begin to turn your nightmares back into dreams again. Observe your fear as you would observe the sun rising — watch it, and you let your sense of the here and now disarm it so that it cannot control you."

Deb folded her legs up onto the couch and sank her chin into her hand as she thought through what this strange and exotic man had told her. She didn't know how, or why, but what he was saying actually made sense to her, and that her need for the reassurance of her grandfather's arms — or even Kevin's — had diminished considerably. "Thank you," she said finally.

Ikeda bowed from the waist as he sat on his heels on the floor near the center of the room. "You are most welcome."

Evidently the girl was contented to remain on the couch, for after a long moment of silence, Ikeda saw out of the corner of his eye as her head slipped to the cushioned arm of the couch with eyes closed in slumber. Silently he rose to his feet, retrieved the throw blanket from the back of the couch and covered her so that she could stay warm. Then, with a deep and silent sigh, he glanced at his watch and reclaimed his spot in the center of the living room from which he could sit in perfect stillness and listen to all that was going on around him.

Always an early riser, thanks to starting out life on a Montana ranch, George Canfield stood next to the patio door that opened onto his balcony, cradled his coffee cup in his hand and wondered for yet another countless time just how he had managed to get mixed up in this cadre of super-patriots. He had come to D.C. with the best of intentions – to make a difference for his constituents and try to serve his country – but somewhere that intent had gotten blurred. He had listened to the snow job that Harry Burns and Tom Jackson had sold him during a long lunch and had bought into the idea that through strength and preparedness, he could accomplish his idealistic agenda all that much more effectively.

Now, with things starting to slowly unravel and the prospect that the only way to defend himself against being held accountable for the things that he had helped foster was to bring another person or organization down, he wasn't so sure what he'd done was the right thing. If being a super-patriot was all that it was cracked up to be, why were so many who had worked so hard to further their agenda now cooling their heels in a military stockade? Why would the FBI be following his every move and probably listening in on his every phone call?

Where had it all gone wrong, Canfield asked himself bitterly, and how could he begin to salvage what little was left of his reputation and honor before he got dragged down into the mire with the others?

He sagged against the wall as it occurred to him that he could begin to cooperate with the investigation into his friends – become an informant. But he wasn't exactly sure how to do it without causing comment or raising the suspicions of the others. A thought struck him, and he slowly straightened and then drained the rest of his cooling coffee with one gulp.

Knowing that there was nobody at his office at this hour on a Saturday morning, he dialed his own office. He waited until the operator at the switchboard had forwarded the call to his office extension and the answering machine there had picked up the call. "Hello," he began quietly, then took a deep breath. "Look, I know you guys are listening in on my phone calls. I want to talk to somebody. I'm in over my head, and I know it."

He waited, but no voice answered his plea. "C'mon, fellas. Burns and Jackson had you all figured out two days ago – I'm sure you've noticed that all our meetings are taking place where you can't hope to listen in. I'm not comfortable with what they're planning to do, and I want out. I need help. Will one of you people PLEASE answer me?"

Again he waited, and again there was no reply. "Damn!" he swore softly and slammed the phone back down onto the cradle. He'd have to get to the office sometime either today or tomorrow to get to the answering machine to erase the suspicious message before it could cause any comment. Burns and Jackson were starting to funnel so much through their secretaries, there was no way to know that his secretary wouldn't mention the message to one of theirs and give him away.

No sooner had he begun to turn away and head back to the kitchen for some more coffee than the telephone began to ring garishly into the early morning. Frowning, he picked it up. "Yes?"

"Senator Canfield, this is Special Agent Jim Gillespie of the FBI."

"Ah," Canfield breathed in relief. "You WERE listening."

Gillespie smiled grimly and knocked back another gulp of cold coffee. "Listening to what, Senator?"

Canfield snorted in frustration. "Did you call me at this hour of the morning to play games, Agent?"

"No, sir," Gillespie admitted. "But I did call to see if you were serious."

"Completely," Canfield stated in a completely convinced tone. "I know you guys have us under surveillance, but that our mobile meetings have probably stymied you. Burns and Jackson are also starting to run a lot of stuff through their secretaries, in order to avert suspicion."

"Really?" Gillespie nodded to his partner, who reached for the outside line in order to inform Berghoff of this latest development. Gillespie returned his attention to the rebellious senator. "And what do you have to offer us?"

Canfield again breathed easier. "I want to talk – and I want to help you nail them."

"Senator, if you are involved in the kinds of things your colleagues are, you realize that you won't be able to get out of this scott-free…"

"I just want out," Canfield said with quiet desperation. "They're talking about raising a scandal that will knock any revelations about us right off the front pages – and one that will pay back the Centre and its new Chairman for lack of cooperation."

Gillespie's eyebrows soared. "What kind of scandal?"

"They're going to drag up some dirty laundry from the Centre's past and make Miss Parker have to try to explain it away," Canfield shrugged as if the agent on the other end of the line could see. "And while she certainly has some explaining to do, this is getting out of hand, as far as I'm concerned. I may have had my lapses as far as judging what was right and wrong lately, but I don't necessarily find the idea of covering one's ass with another person's tattered reputation a very good thing to do."

Gillespie's brows soared even higher. "They're wanting to take a run at the Centre, eh?" He let his voice show his incredulity. "Better people than they have tried – and failed."

"I seriously doubt that would stop them," Canfield snorted bitterly.

"Listen," the FBI agent told the senator suddenly. "Stay where you are. I need to get in touch with my superiors, and I'll be back in touch with you as soon as I know how he wants us to play this. You aren't planning to go anywhere today, are you?"

"Just to the office to get rid of that message on my machine when I spill my guts as far as wanting to betray my associates…"

"The message machine can wait. Give me an hour to get back to you, OK?"

Canfield thought about it for a little while, and then nodded. It was a small enough price to pay for beginning to extricate himself from this hopeless situation. "OK," he agreed sourly.

He heard the phone on the other end disconnect, and he replaced his receiver with a shaking hand. He'd done it now – changed sides in this thing entirely.

He hoped he was doing the right thing at last.

The knock on the door after Margaret had arrived with her suitcase and carry-on bag surprised Jarod, and he opened the door to let Ethan into the house. "I thought that I could give you a lift to the airport," the younger man told his brother. "Besides, you forgot to give me your house keys last night…"

"I'm hoping that I can convince you to hang onto my car too, until I can make arrangements to have it shipped back East," Jarod told him while fishing his key ring from his pocket and quickly removing two keys. "The brass key is to the front door – the nickel one is to the padlock on the storage shed in the back yard where I keep all the outdoor stuff."

"Unka Ee-fan!" Ginger exclaimed as she dragged her suitcase out into the living room to stand next to her father's. "Me thought me not see oo t'day."

"Nah," Ethan grinned and swooped down on his niece and hauled her up into his arms. "I just had to say another goodbye to you." He looked over at Margaret. "Are you all ready to go?"

"I think so," she answered. "Ginger, why don't you go to the bathroom one more time, so you won't have to when we get to the airport?"

"Gamma…"

"Grandma's right, Sprite," Ethan said, depositing the little girl on her feet again. "Go on, and I'll get your suitcase out to the car." He watched Ginger scamper down the hallway and then turned to look at his brother when Jarod didn't have anything to add.

Jarod was looking around his house – a place that had long been a refuge, his first real home – with some regret. "I'm going to miss the place," he said softly, as much to himself as to any of the others in the room with him. "This was the first place where I felt I really belonged, that was really MINE, you know?" He looked from his mother to his younger brother.

"It's not going anywhere, Jarod," Margaret soothed. "And where you're going, you know very well that you belong just as much as you've ever belonged here. The time will come when you come back to visit – and the place will still be here."

"Remember, I helped you decorate the place," Ethan reminded him with a grin. "I'm not about to go out and hire an interior decorator to undo what took us the better part of two years to put together properly!"

"That's a comforting thought, I guess," Jarod sighed and shook himself mentally. He looked down as he felt Ginger insert her hand into his. "Ready to go, Sprite?"

"Uh-huh," she nodded with eyes that sparkled with excitement and anticipation.

Margaret took charge of Ginger and seated her in the back seat of Ethan's car while Ethan deposited suitcases in the trunk. Jarod paused one more time just inside his front door to look around the house he'd called home for the last five years. Then, with another wistful sigh, Jarod turned the deadbolt by hand and pulled the front door shut with a definitive click.

Ethan respected Jarod's obvious wish for quiet between them while he drove the several miles from the house to the airstrip where the sleek, black Centre jet stood waiting. The pilot could be seen signing paperwork with the airport authorities, vouchers that assured payment for jet fuel purchased that morning and flight plans among other things. Seeing the car pull up next to the jet, the pilot finished his business and came over to the car to retrieve the quartet of suitcases from the trunk and pack them into storage compartments in the belly of the jet.

"I'll see you in a couple of weeks," Margaret told her middle son and then hugged him tightly. "Be good."

"Enjoy your trip, Mom," Ethan told her and hugged her back. "And tell that sister of mine I love her."

Then he was bending down to Ginger. "Goodbye, Sprite. You take good care of your Daddy, won't you?"

Ginger had Bear in her arm tightly, but still reached up to pull her uncle's face down so that she could give him a kiss. "Me miss oo, Ee-fan."

"I'll miss you too," he kissed her cheek gently. "Be good."

"Come on," Margaret called to her granddaughter with outstretched hand. "Let's see what kind of seat you can have on the jet, OK?"

Ethan turned then to his older brother. "So," he said with real sadness.

"Yeah," Jarod replied. Now that the moment was here, it was hard to say goodbye to a man with whom he had shared so much of life over the past few years. "God, I didn't realize it would be so hard…"

"This isn't goodbye, Jarod," Ethan told him firmly. "There's a wedding that we'll all be coming back to see in not THAT distant a future, after all…"

"Still…" Jarod moved close all of a sudden and clasped his brother tightly and pounded his back, feeling Ethan return the sentiment. "Take care," he said with an oddly constricted voice.

"You too," Ethan replied and then backed away. "Tell Missy I told her to take good care of you."

Jarod grinned. "I don't think you'll have much to worry about there," he chuckled. "And you tell that girlfriend of yours… what's her name again?"

"Cassandra," Ethan supplied with a shake of the head. "For a genius, you can sure forget names easily."

"It'll be easier to remember when the name doesn't change every year or so," Jarod quipped, taking the last shot in a familiar verbal sparring match. "Anyway, tell her to take good care of you too."

"I will," Ethan promised, then waved. "Go on now – Missy is waiting, and if my memory serves me correctly, she's not the best when it comes to patience…"

Jarod laughed out loud. "Bye, Ethan," he called and then walked up the steps of the jet.

Margaret had Ginger already seated in one of the window seats and had her buckled in securely. Jarod took the seat across the aisle from them and grinned at his daughter. "Ready?"

"Let's go, Daddy!" Ginger called eagerly.

Jarod looked up and nodded at the pilot, who had stood waiting in the cockpit door for his passengers to settle into their seats. Within minutes, the engines of the jet had wound themselves up tightly, and the aircraft began to move slowly and surely to the end of the runway.

Canfield opened the door and let the two FBI agents into his spacious apartment. "Can I offer you gentlemen some coffee?" he asked nervously.

"Thank you, no," Assistant Director Berghoff shook his head and motioned toward the living room and the seating available there. "This isn't a social call."

"I… know…" Canfield responded lamely and then followed the agents into his living room and sat down on the edge of the easy chair. "What now?" he asked anxiously. "What do you want of me?"

"First, you tell us what you know of this group and its activities, past and present. THEN we figure out how best to use your information to put an end to this," Gillespie told him, pulling a small tape recorder from his jacket pocket and pressing the record button before setting it in the middle of the coffee table. "This is Agent Jim Gillespie, and my partner is AD Berghoff. We are interviewing Senator George Canfield at his apartment. Senator?"

"Wait a minute… What will this get for me in the long run?" Canfield looked back and forth between the two FBI agents. "Can I trade my help and eventual testimony for immunity from prosecution?"

"That will be up to the federal prosecutor," Berghoff told him frankly. "And, of course, if the Senate Ethics Committee decides to take up this issue, I don't know how much your cooperation will count in that venue. All I can say is that your cooperation will be noted and passed along as a contributing factor to closing this case." He gazed at the slightly pale and disheveled Senator. "That's the best we can do. And now, if you don't mind…" He pointed to the tape recorder.

Canfield closed his eyes, knowing this was the point of no return. Once he started telling these two everything that he knew, there would be no going back. "I am a member of a group that has existed for over forty years," he began, remembering the way that Harry and Tom had introduced HIM to the group not long after he'd taken office. "We call ourselves 'super-patriots.'"

"So super-patriotic that you think the law doesn't apply to you?" Gillespie asked scornfully, only to earn a glower from his superior.

"Who all is a member of this group?" Berghoff asked, deflecting the Senator's pique and keeping the discussion on track.

"Myself, Senator Harold Burns from Florida, Senator Tom Jackson from Vermont, Brigadier General Douglas Curtis of the Air Force and Colonel Harris. Another member, Phillip Baldwin of the NSA, died a few days ago in an auto accident."

"Are these the members that have always belonged to this group?"

"No, sir," Canfield shook his head. "The civilian side of the group changes according to who is in office — and Harry Burns brought in Phil Baldwin a year or so before I joined to replace a representative of the General Accounting Office who had a stroke and had to retire in to a convalescent home. All of us are under obligation, should we reach our term limits or lose an election or retire, to recommend a likely replacement. For example, I joined the group only last year, recommended by former Senator Reeves of Michigan."

"What about the military men?"

"Curtis and Harris have been members of the group for years – I'm not sure that they were part of the original group. They aren't old enough, frankly."

"And the NSA agent who died recently?"

"He was our accountant, as was his predecessor."

Berghoff was taking notes as well as recording the interview, and he looked up from his notes. "And what was the purpose of this group?"

"To take advantage of any and all opportunities to sponsor the kind of research that would keep the United States' level of preparedness second to none in the world," Canfield responded with a hint of the pride he had once felt in their dealings. "To serve that end, we who are in the civilian end of government see to it that funding we receive from political action committees is funneled into military projects with research and development firms who… aren't really picky as to the KIND of project they'll accept, if you know what I mean…"

"No, Senator," Berghoff responded sternly. "What DO you mean?"

"We promote and fund the kinds of projects that would tend to violate international treaties, were their presence known," Canfield answered nervously. "We deal mostly with technology that would enhance black-ops units and agents imbedded on foreign soil – chemical and pharmaceutical substances and psychological methods that will easily extract important information and/or help prevent detection of our agents. We have, in the past, funded the efforts of a few talented individuals to plug in all the known variables to a situation and run simulations that predict the responses of foreign governments or operatives, the reactions of our military, or whatever we need to know ahead of time."

"You say this group has been in operation for years?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then what has changed to make you have second thoughts about what you're doing?"

"Everything started coming apart after there was a change in the administration of our key R & D firm, known as the Centre. The new Chairman there decided that she wanted no further part in the kind of work we were doing, and summarily shit-canned all the projects they had been working on for us. She boxed up all the data, wrote a ton of checks for unspent funding, and turned everything over to the Pentagon with the understanding, which our military members had fostered, that the Pentagon knew all about these things. Since then, our efforts to get the Centre to reconsider its decision have all failed miserably."

"And now?"

"And now that most of the military men involved with us have been arrested, including the two members of the group, Burns and Jackson have decided that you boys must be onto us, and that the only way to protect ourselves is to take an offensive posture – drag up past projects that the Centre was part of and make them public as well as expose any and all public officials who might have been involved in that project. The group decided that the scandal would knock any reports of OUR wrong-doing right off the front pages of the newspapers, and so cover our asses, as it were."

"Do you have any idea exactly what kind of Centre projects…"

"None at all. Tom Jackson said that he had the ideal project in mind – something to do with a 'Pretender,' whatever the hell that is – and that he'd start leaking information about it to the press." Canfield grimaced. "I think he has visions of himself as a modern-day 'Deep Throat' kind of character."

"You are aware of the assault on one of the Centre scientists?"

The Senator looked down and nodded guiltily. "We had a long discussion when Colonel Stiller was arrested as to what to do next."

"Did the group sanction the attack?"

Canfield looked up sharply. "General Curtis was the committee member in charge of directing the liaisons in their dealings with the Centre. He didn't run all of his tactics past the group — as long as whatever he did was effective, I don't think any of the rest of us wanted to know."

Berghoff leaned forward a little. "Will you be willing to sign a statement to the effect of affirming that everything you just told us was the truth?"

Canfield nodded, sitting back in his easy chair as if all the stuffing had been taken out of him.

"We need you to agree verbally, so that it's on the tape, Senator," Gillespie pointed out.

"Yes, I'll sign," Canfield said tiredly. "Can you help me?" he asked them then, letting his hazel eyes dart from one agent to the next.

"When do you meet next with your group?" Berghoff asked, turning the tape recorder off and stuffing it into his jacket pocket.

"Monday at noon."

The AD looked at his agent and then nodded. "We'll want you to wear a wire, so that we can hear exactly what goes on at this meeting. Will you do that for us?"

"What if they figure out…"

"They won't," Gillespie reassured the Senator quickly. "Contrary to what you see on television, we're more than capable of using the kind of micro-technology that would be very difficult to spot even if you DID know a bug was there."

"OK," Canfield said finally. "What then?"

"That will depend on what is discussed at the meeting," Berghoff said frankly. "If you think you can manipulate the conversation around so that your associates can convict themselves, that would be great – but don't do anything that would jeopardize your safety. We will have a full team of agents ready to move in on your location should anything start looking like you're in trouble." The AD gazed at the Senator evenly. "Do you suspect that either of your associates might be capable of violence?"

Canfield shrugged. "Who knows what any man can do when pushed hard enough," he responded cautiously. "When will I get this bug of yours?"

"Gillespie here will come here to your house early Monday morning before YOU go to work. You can wear the bug all day — we will only have a warrant to tape the meeting with Senators Jackson and Burns."

"And if they figure it out?"

Berghoff was putting his pen away. "I told you, we'll have a unit of agents tailing your vehicle out of sight. Should anything untoward start happening in the car, we'll be able to move in on a moment's notice. But if all goes well, you'll return to your office and your co-conspirators will be none the wiser."

"Then what?"

Berghoff rose to his feet, Gillespie a moment later. "Then you wait. Depending on what is included in the conversation, we may have enough to get a warrant — or we may have to have you attend one more to get as much incriminating evidence as we can before going for the warrant."

"Is that it?" Canfield was amazed. "That's all?"

"For today," Berghoff nodded and gestured to Gillespie to head to the door. "Like I said, Agent Gillespie will be here early Monday morning with the bug you're to wear to your mobile meeting. You'll be contacted that evening with further instructions." He followed his field agent to the door, noticing that Canfield was following behind them like a whipped puppy. "You've done the right thing, Senator," he said, turning to face the man. "Whatever happens from here, you've done the right thing."

Canfield closed the door after the FBI agents had left, and he drooped into the living room and headed straight for the bar to pour himself a very stiff drink. It was going to be a very long weekend of anticipation and dread. And he'd still have to get into the office to take care of that revealing message on the machine too.

Miss Parker's eyebrows raised when it was Sydney that answered her knock at his door. "What's this — didn't Kevin set up your therapy machine?"

"I decided that I was going to have a day's break from that damned thing," Sydney grumbled as he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek when she walked past him. "Between being shot and having knee surgery, I've been tied down to that couch for weeks now – and it's beginning to wear on my nerves. I decided that since today was a special day for the family, I'd make it just that much more special for me and escape from knee-torture."

She looked deeper into the house and found Kevin listening. She blinked surprise at him — he shrugged concession back at her. "It will be interesting to find out just what Kevin decides will be his fee for not ratting you out to your therapist," she said, her hand grasping Sydney's warmly as she passed by him.

"You look ready for the day's game," Sydney commented. Davy was in his favorite sports tee shirt and jeans, with his cap and glove in hand.

"Hi, Grandpa," Davy greeted his grandfather fondly. Strange — he knew his mother had been very worried about Grandpa Sydney for days now, and Grandpa didn't look as if he was ill or anything. "Mommy said you haven't been feeling so good lately. You OK now?"

Sydney's chestnut eyes shot a sharp look at Miss Parker, and then shook his head. "I'm fine, Davy. Thanks for asking."

Davy trotted into the living room and dumped his glove and cap on the back of the couch. "If you're not going to be in the den today, do you think I can try to talk Kevin into video games?"

The psychiatrist's brows raised, and he looked back at his protégé. "What do you say, Kevin — do you want a day off from all this heavy reading? If I'm going to play hooky from the damned gizmo, you might as well get to play hooky from the Centre Archives…"

The young Pretender's face broke into a smile. "I'd like that," he admitted. "We've been at it pretty hard for quite a while."

"You've made good progress, from what I hear," Miss Parker told him with a nod. "Go on then, you two — tear up the electronic racetrack."

"Yeah!" Davy trotted toward the den, with Kevin following close behind.

Miss Parker chuckled at them, then looked around. "Where's Deb?"

Sydney's face crinkled into a combination of admiration and concern. "She decided she wanted to drive into Dover to see her father this morning. I have a feeling she went in to tell him about her relationship with Kevin."

"I was hoping she'd wait on that until after Monday."

He nodded and leaned a little heavier on his crutch. "So was I — but I suppose she just wants it out in the open now, and I can appreciate that too. She's already had me climbing her case a couple of times — she probably just wants to get through her father doing basically the same thing so she doesn't have to dread it anymore."

"True — although all WE have to dread, now, is facing Broots once he knows what's been going on," she mentioned in mild frustration.

"We'd have to face it one time or another, just like she would." He gestured with his head for them to head to the kitchen. "C'mon. I have some coffee made, and I'll bet you could use some."

'I'm not sure about that," she said, following him obediently. "I'm so excited about Jarod finally coming home today that I'm just about ready to jump out of my skin already — I don't know if I need much more of an energy boost." She put her hand on his shoulder and moved past him. "You sit down — which cup is yours? I'll get you some more…"

"The green one," he answered, grateful for her offer and parking himself in the nearest kitchen chair. "Thanks."

"How'd you sleep last night?" Miss Parker asked as she poured two cups of coffee and carried them over to the table.

"Well, actually," he replied, taking up his cup and taking a long and needed sip. "I'm having trouble waking up this morning."

"You could probably use another night or two just like that one," she observed, joining him.

"You're probably right," he answered and ran his finger absently along the handle of his mug. "All I do know for sure is that if I did dream last night, I don't remember."

"I tell you what: let's not dwell on the darker stuff today, Syd," Miss Parker decided suddenly. "We have Jarod and Ginger coming home at last — with his mother tagging along as a visitor. Let's leave the darker topics alone for a day and think about how things seem to be calming down for all of us finally."

Sydney couldn't help smiling at her. "Going to play Pollyanna today, are we?"

"Hey!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands apart, "God knows that we deserve a break from our doom and gloom at least once in a while, don't we?" She reached out and took hold of the empty hand Sydney had resting next to his coffee cup. "And things ARE getting better, Sydney. We have a few areas of concern to work through later yet, but overall…"

"I know, ma petite," he said, letting go of his coffee and patting her hand on his. "I know."

Margaret moved very slowly and quietly to stand from her seat without rousing her granddaughter and moved to sit next to Jarod on the other side of the plane. Jarod glanced past her to Ginger and smiled as he saw how she had fallen asleep watching the clouds and far-away ground go by below her. "She'll have a great case of jet-lag by the time she gets home," he commented quietly.

"It's a combination of excitement and apprehension," Margaret explained in an equally quiet voice. "The flight and the idea of seeing Davy again thrill her, but she's very aware of going to a new place, with people she doesn't know…"

"She'll have you and Davy and me around her to help ease her into her new life," Jarod affirmed, as much to himself as to his mother. "And she'll get to know Deb and Sydney and Kevin and Broots and Sam soon enough." Jarod patted his mother's arm on the armrest between them. "That reminds me. I want to talk to you a little bit about Sydney."

Margaret could see the defensive look on his face and decided to try to disarm some of his fears immediately. "I'm not going to tear him to shreds, Jarod, if that's what you're worried about," she assured him. "I just want to know a few things…"

"I know that, Mom, but you need to realize that he's not in a really good place emotionally right now," he told her softly and firmly. He sighed. "He's finally having to work through some of what he went through as a boy in Dachau — and it's really bad, Mom. He's not going to be able to deal with a lot of recriminations. At least, not until he and I have had a chance to have several very long, involved and intense discussions about things we have yet to settle between us. Frankly, I think he and I deserve the chance to do that before…"

"I don't want to make him feel bad, Jarod — at least, that isn't my intent," Margaret insisted, patting his hand reassuringly. "I just need to know… I need answers that only he can give me."

"Promise me you'll try not to upset him very much," Jarod asked worriedly. "He's been the one whose been holding the family back there together as things have gone so wrong lately — we all need him as stable as possible."

"Missy's worried that I'm going to try to rip him a new…"

"Yeah, she's worried – and wanting to be a little protective. His physical health has taken a couple of hard hits recently too, and now with the nightmares and guilt rising from his time as a Nazi prisoner…"

"I promise I'll try not to upset him too much – but I'm not going to be able to help it if one of my questions triggers things he already feels badly about…"

"No, but you could stop pushing if you see that he's having trouble dealing with it," Jarod insisted firmly, "and wait until he and I have a chance to settle that point before pressing again."

"You can't really blame me," Margaret looked down at her hands. "I want to see what it is about this man that you can still feel pressed to defend him, despite what he did to you for all those years…"

"It wasn't always Sydney, Mom," Jarod exclaimed softly and then glanced around his mother again to make sure their conversation wasn't loud enough to disturb his daughter. "And it wasn't always Sydney's choice in the matter. He was under a lot of pressure to allow me to be used as an experimental subject – and he got a lot of grief thrown at him when he would try to stand up to Mr. Parker and Mr. Raines on my behalf. He lost too, Mom – the Centre stole his son, the woman he loved, put his twin brother into a coma for twenty years, lied to him and made him believe he'd killed an associate in another car accident… When you speak of him, I think you believe that he was wholly knowledgeable and cooperative with everything that went on – and it just isn't so."

Margaret stared at her son for a while. "I suppose I'm still seeing him through your eyes – holding him responsible because I simply don't know enough about what else went on. I don't want to make him simply a convenient target – he's just the one person who had the chance to be closest to you for all those years, and I'm still horribly, madly jealous of that time."

"I think you'll find that he understands that too a whole lot better than you think," he told her with a sigh. "You see, he didn't know he even had a son until Nicholas was grown and in college – and when he found him, he had to recognize that another man had raised his son as his own for all those years. And as I found out later, after I went back, even though he and Nicholas speak from time to time, they aren't very close at all." He patted his mother's hand. "So you see, he knows all about being jealous of the one who was close when it should have been someone else. If anything, you should be prepared for him to be a little jealous of YOU for getting our family put back together after all, when his stayed permanently shattered."

"You never told us that," she told him in a startled tone.

"I never needed to until now," he replied gently.

Margaret shifted her gaze from her son's face to the white, fluffy clouds that seemed to stream slowly by outside the little, round porthole. "I'll keep that in mind," she told him with thoughtful sincerity. "I think that rather than simply be angry at all of these people for all of this time, I should have wanted to hear you tell me about them."

"I wasn't ready to talk about them, Mom," Jarod told her. "I had just found all of us and put us together as a family. Sydney and Missy were the life I'd left behind me – the life I wanted to forget."

"But you didn't forget."

"No," he admitted. "It took a while, but I finally figured out that they were a very important part of who I was — and who I am now. But by then, we all had enough else to think about that you didn't want to hear, and I didn't have the time to tell you properly. I do know though," he added quietly and gently, "that Dad and Sydney had a chance to talk once, before I found you all. Dad told me once, when it was just the two of us, that he thought Sydney was OK."

Margaret blinked. She suddenly missed her husband very much and still gave his opinions a great deal of weight. "Your Dad said that?"

"Mmm-hmmm…" Jarod nodded.

It was enough to give her plenty to think about as the plane continued in its trek across the continent – enough to give her pause when she finally did meet him. If Charles said that he thought this Sydney was OK, maybe she needed to meet him with a mind even more open than she'd originally intended. She leaned toward her son and felt him lift his arm and let her lean closer.

Deb hesitated as she reached for the handle of her father's hospital room. Once more she found herself questioning the wisdom of telling him everything that was going on in her life at this point, when he would obviously be frustrated from being stuck in a hospital where his input into the situation was necessarily so limited. Was she only asking for more grief – and maybe laying the groundwork for the kind of rejection that she'd dreamed about just that morning by telling him something that she KNEW he didn't want to hear?

And yet, would it be any easier on her OR on him to wait until later? Certainly by waiting, she'd at least KNOW if she actually were pregnant or not – but then again, if she told him now, he could prepare himself for the possibility… Oh, the alternatives were enough to give her a headache!

With a deep breath, she pulled open the door and walked in. "Hi, Daddy!"

"Debbie!" Broots smiled and put his container of apple juice back on the bedside table. "I didn't expect to see you today," he exclaimed as he held his hand out to her.

"I decided I hadn't been in to see you for a couple of days, and I didn't want to wait much longer," she answered honestly. She let him pull on her until he could put his arms around her and hug her tightly. She rested against his shoulder for a long moment with eyes closed. "I love you, Daddy."

"I love you too," Broots said slowly and cautiously. He held her close for a while, and then put her away from him just far enough so that he could look into her face. "What's going on, Deb?"

She blushed and then turned slightly pale. "What do you mean?"

"C'mon, Deb, this is me – remember? You tend not to get THIS cuddly and demonstrative unless there's something going on with you. What's up?" There was no way that he was going to let her go, and so he held onto her hands tightly so that she finally sat down on the edge of the hospital bed next to him. "Deb?"

"I'm in love, Daddy," she told him finally.

"In love?!" Broots repeated incredulously. "Isn't this a little sudden? I mean, you're just starting to get over…"

"It's Kevin, Dad," she continued in a soft voice, "and he's helping me get over things too."

"Kevin." Broots repeated again. In his mind's eye, he saw again the young rescued Pretender and his daughter embracing outside the French doors of Ben's inn, and he realized that this probably wasn't half as sudden as it might have seemed. "And what about him – how does he feel about you?"

"We love each other very much," she told him softly. "He sometimes helps me when I have nightmares…"

"You're still having those?" he asked gently. She nodded slowly. "Are you still talking to Sydney?"

"Yeah, but…"

Broots frowned. "But what, Deb?"

"Grandpa's had troubles of his own lately, Dad," she explained quietly. "Something about the Nazis…"

"Oh man…" Broots breathed out in sympathy for his old friend. A long time ago, after Sydney had gone AWOL after seeing an old Nazi nemesis in the Centre, Miss Parker had taken him aside and told him what she knew about what Sydney had gone through – and it was enough to curl his rapidly receding hair even then. Then he narrowed his eyes. "Just how has Kevin been 'helping' you?"

Deb blushed. "Sometimes he holds me for a while when I'm having trouble waking up from a nightmare…"

"In your bedroom?" Broots asked suspiciously.

"Sometimes," she answered honestly.

"Does he ever try to take advantage…"

"Daddy, he never does anything that I tell him not to do," she told him – surprised at the honesty of the answer, and yet how much that would truly anger her father was simply omitted from that simple truth.

Broots' face eased into a gentle smile. "Just making sure, sweetheart," he soothed and chafed her hands between his. "I just worry about you since I'm not there…"

"Grandpa's there…"

"Have you told him about this?"

Deb blushed again as she nodded. "He wasn't too happy about it, but yeah, he knows."

Broots frowned again. "Why wasn't he happy about it?"

"Because he was afraid that we'd do something that would make it harder for me to work through… things…" she answered, again being truthful. "But even he can see that Kevin is just helping now."

"You listen to your Grandpa Sydney," Broots instructed her with a finger shaking in the air in front of her face. "If he thinks that something might be dangerous…"

"He knows that Kevin would never hurt me, Daddy," she complained quickly. "We've talked all about it – all three of us. He's OK with it."

Again Broots' face smoothed. "Well, as long as you don't do anything that could cause you more problems in the long run – and as long as Sydney is comfortable with the situation – I guess I can't complain much." He smiled at her. "I'm glad you have him to watch over you while I'm stuck here."

"I am too, Daddy," she told him as she leaned forward for another quick hug.

"So," he said in a much lighter tone of voice, "tell me all about your job at the library now. How's that working out?"

Miss Parker moved her knight carefully and then looked up. "Check."

Sydney frowned – he hadn't seen that move coming at all. A frosted eyebrow rose halfway up his forehead. "I thought you said you hadn't played in a while," he reminded her accusingly.

"I haven't played a human since last you and I went at it," she admitted, settling back in her chair comfortably. "But Jarod put a version on the computer at the house – and I've had occasion to wile away the time a few times matching wits with Mr. Pentium…"

"Matching wits with Mr. Pentium…" he repeated dryly as he studied the chessboard with renewed concentration to see if there was a loophole through which he could escape the apparently inevitable, and then moved his bishop to protect his king. Then, with interest, he watched her face study his move and the possible responses. "You're very quiet today, Parker…"

Her storm-grey eyes came up to meet his. "I know. I'm just wanting Jarod to get here, and wishing he was already here."

"I'm surprised. You never were very good at practicing patience," Sydney commented in a gentle voice, "not even as a little girl."

"I've gotten a little better," she protested in her own defense.

His lips curled into a fond smile. "True, you're not pacing up and down and snarling at everyone in sight — this is progress…"

Miss Parker's mouth dropped open in surprise at the unexpected ribbing, and then folded into a smirk. "Getting sentimental for the 'good ole days', Syd? Of course, without Broots around to cringe and stammer…"

"No, no," he put up a defensive hand. "I'm quite content with the progress you've made so far." He fell silent and watched her think through her move for a while longer. "Are you going to stare at the board until lunchtime, or are you going to move?"

"NOW who's having trouble practicing patience?" she chuckled at him and reached for the knight and took the bishop. "Check."

Very calmly, Sydney reached for his queen and brought her from the other side of the board, taking the knight. "Check."

Now it was Miss Parker's turn to stare in consternation at the chessboard. "If I didn't know you better, I'd say you distracted me so that you could gain an advantage," she shook her head and buried her chin in her hand.

"I would NEVER do anything like that, Parker…"

"Riiight…" she quipped in a disbelieving tone. "I should have known better than to even think such a thing…"

"That's right," he nodded vigorously. "After all, I've never given you any reason to distrust me."

"I used to watch you play Jarod, remember?" she reminded him sharply. "I may not have been up to your level of mastery at the time, but even I could see that you'd bring out your little comments at JUST the right time to chip away at the concentration."

"And still he beat me regularly," Sydney reminded her back. "Besides, the cliché goes 'everything is fair in love and war,' and chess is nothing but stylized and formal warfare."

"You're picking nits, Syd."

"I love you too, Parker, and it's still your move."

She looked up at him with sudden fondness. "We haven't done this for quite a while," she observed softly. "I've missed our Saturdays — and our chess games."

He smiled. "So have I, ma petite. I'm even just a little jealous of Mr. Pentium — how sad is that?"

Miss Parker chuckled. "Well, maybe life finally can get back to something that approximates normal around here once and for all."

"Give it a few weeks yet at least," Sydney told her as he returned his attention to the chessboard. "You have yet to figure out what would constitute a 'normal' for you that includes Jarod and now another child. Broots needs to be released from the hospital and come home…"

"I get the picture," she waved her hand across the chessboard. "I just mean that I'd like to think that all of the upheaval we've been through this summer is just about at an end, and we can start figuring out what 'normal' means now."

"You think this mess with the discontinued projects has been dealt with?" Sydney asked, curious.

"All the principals that I know of are behind bars now," she said with a shrug. "What else could go wrong?"

"Mmmmm…" Sydney leaned back in his chair and shook both head and forefinger warningly. "Don't tempt fate, Parker. This IS the Centre we're talking about here — even if you are trying to change its spots — and you know how things work around there. Just about the time we think things are taken care of, something new jumps out of the woodwork at you."

"Whatever, it isn't going to happen today," she stated firmly. "Today is going to be a quiet day just like our Saturdays used to be — when you and I play chess and putter in the kitchen, and Davy plays softball with his friends. The only thing new to jump out of the woodwork today will be when some of our family comes home to stay later this afternoon."

"I hate to tell you this, ma petite, but we won't be playing chess at all if you don't finally break down and make a move," he relaxed and grinned at her.

"True," she grinned back, reached for her other knight and gently removed his queen from the board. "Check."

Sydney frowned, cradled his chin into his hand and leaned against the cushioned arm of the easy chair. "Damn."

With a final few keystrokes, David Lawler filed the story he'd been working on for the better part of a week and then leaned back in his chair and sighed. NOW he could get down to the business of checking out some of the information his unnamed informant had given him. He quickly checked to see that the article had uploaded properly for editorial review, and then brought up his Internet browser.

Heading to a search engine, he typed in the name 'William Raines' and hit enter. The icon in the upper corner of his browser waved for a long moment while the powerful program searched through its hundreds of thousands of web pages — only to come up after churning for longer than normal with a 'Not Found' error message. Lawler frowned. According to the information given him, William Raines had been the Chairman of the Centre for over ten years — odd that someone of that stature didn't have at least one biography page listed somewhere.

The second name on his list was 'Lyle Parker' — and that too brought up the 'Not Found' error message. Lawler scratched his head. That was damned strange. Both of the men he'd searched had, according to the information in his hand, extensive reputations. He typed in 'Charles Parker' with no more success.

Finally, with 'Sydney Green,' he hit pay dirt — although minimal at best. It seemed that Sydney Green — DOCTOR Sydney Green — was a psychiatrist who had written several seminal research papers on psychological and emotional bonds between twins, as well as a very old paper on the effects of stress on the adolescent mind. The articles authored by the man were readily available — and copies of the textbook he'd authored on the elements of psychiatry were still available for order from . But information about the man himself was virtually non-existent.

'Lazlo Broots' had a single entry found — evidently the man had written a book on computer security systems — but again, no information on the man himself existed. When Lawler entered 'Major Charles Russell' into the search field, he once more came up with a 'Not Found' error message.

Lawler stretched back in his chair with his hands behind his neck and his eyes narrowed, studying the error message still displaying on his monitor. Just who the hell were these people that seemed to be so powerful and yet virtually unknown and unlisted anywhere? On a whim, he leaned forward again and typed in 'The Centre' in and hit enter. Immediately he was presented a link to the Centre's own public website, touting itself as a premier research and development corporation holding several patents in the fields of pharmacology and chemistry. He clicked on the link to the page listing the corporate officers and found himself staring at the picture of the woman at the top of the page.

So THAT was Miss Parker, he thought to himself approvingly. She certainly was a whole lot more impressive when she wasn't covered with dust and grime, as she had been in the now-familiar video of her finally emerging from the ruin of her corporate offices after leading several hundred employees to safety.

Not far from her picture was one of Lazlo Broots that listed him as the Director of Technology and one of Dr. Sydney Green that listed him as the Director of Psychogenics — whatever the hell THAT was. At least he now had some idea what a few of the people he was investigating looked like.

Following a hunch, he moved back to the home page and entered 'Pretender Project' in the search field found there. Upon hitting enter, he was immediately presented with a 'Enter Password To Continue' page. Lawler began to smile.

Maybe there WAS something to this story after all…

Feedback, please:


	24. Homecoming

Resolutions – 24

Homecoming

by MMB

"What time does your game start, Davy?" Sydney asked as he reached to take the plate of lunchmeat from Deb.

"At two," the boy replied. "But I promised Jeremy that I'd help him haul equipment from his house today – so I have to be over there at about one-thirty."

"Who are you playing this time?" Deb asked with curiosity.

"The Rattlers from Cameron Beach. If we can beat them today, then we're in the championship game next week."

"You actually play teams from other towns?" Kevin blinked in surprise as he took the plate of meat from his mentor and slipped two onto the waiting slices of bread that would be his sandwich.

"Most of the smaller ocean-side communities have sand-lot softball teams that play each other through the summer," Miss Parker told the young man as she spread mayonnaise on her bread. "Now that school has started, they have a sort of play-off season and then championship game. Blue Cove has a pretty talented team of kids."

"Is this what is known as Little League?"

"No, this is something far more informal and unorganized," Sydney informed him. "It's been going on for more than ten years – often with kids that grew up playing the sand-lot games ending up playing for their high-school teams and maybe in college." He smiled at his grandson. "Davy plays short stop."

"What's your team called?" Kevin asked his young friend.

"The Barracudas," Davy replied with a proud grin. "The meanest fish in the sea."

"I thought sharks…" Kevin looked at Sydney with some confusion.

"It's a euphemism," Sydney explained patiently, "that expresses team pride and certainty that they can defeat all comers."

"Oh," Kevin nodded, processing the information. "I get it."

"Deb," Miss Parker looked at the girl across the table from her, "how was your Dad today?"

"Getting ready to get out of his cast at the end of next week," she announced happily, "and to start physical therapy."

"I can imagine that after being laid up in bed for all these weeks, anything to get him up and even slightly mobile has got to look absolutely wonderful," Sydney nodded understandingly. "I was just telling Parker this morning that I'm getting very tired of being tied down to that couch in the den myself. I can sympathize with Broots completely."

"I bet," Deb nodded. "It's good to see you up and around a little bit again."

"What else did he have to say," Sydney pressed very gently. "Did you have a talk with him about…"

"I told him some of it," Deb admitted, washing her bite of sandwich down with a gulp of apple juice and hiding her blush behind her glass. "But not all of it. I decided I'd wait until after Monday and I've seen the doctor..."

"Are you sick, Deb?" Davy asked, his face suddenly very concerned.

"Nah. I just am going to have a check-up," she reassured her young friend with a sharp glance around the table at the adults to stop them from expounding on WHY she felt she needed a check-up yet. "I didn't tell Dad because I didn't want to worry him."

"Oh," Davy breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm glad."

"When does Jarod land?" Deb asked Miss Parker. "Before dinner?"

"Absolutely," Miss Parker replied. "I got word not long after I got here that they were able to be into the air by eight-thirty California time. That should put them on the ground in Dover at about five."

"Who's going?" Davy looked around the table expectantly.

"I think maybe Kevin and I should stay home," Deb said after a meaningful exchange of glances with the young Pretender. "That will leave plenty of room for you, Grandpa…"

"I called for a Centre limousine to be here at four-thirty," Miss Parker stated. "At least we'd all fit…"

Sydney shrugged and nodded. "That's fine with me – we wouldn't fit in my car anyway, and I really would prefer not to drive. I've spent the whole day off of that damned gizmo – I don't want to over-stress the knee anymore than that."

"I could always put you on the machine while you nap after lunch," Kevin suggested.

"Not on your life!" Sydney exclaimed. "I'm enjoying a day free from that damned thing today – and I'm looking forward to napping without having to work to ignore what that thing is doing to my leg just to get to sleep for once." He cast a fond eye at his grandson again. "I was actually thinking of going over to the park for a bit and watching some of Davy's game, to be honest…"

"I thought you said you didn't want to stress the knee," Miss Parker reminded him.

"A little walking isn't going to hurt me that much," Sydney protested, "and I know they have benches over there behind the backstop. Besides, I think Davy could use a rooting section today." He looked at Miss Parker. "Are you coming to the game?"

"You bet," she answered with a wide smile. "I wouldn't miss it for the world – and I can get most of the dinner put together to simmer all afternoon before we need to start heading in that direction."

"I'd like to watch the game too, if you don't mind," Kevin said finally.

"Sounds like you're going to have an entire cheering squad, Davy," Deb told the boy with a pat on the shoulder.

"Sounds good to me," Davy smiled back at her.

"How soon we get there, Daddy?" Ginger asked for the third time

Jarod tipped his arm over so that he could look at his wristwatch. "About two more hours, Sprite. Fifteen minutes since the last time you asked."

"Me gotta go potty, Gamma…"

Margaret looked over at her slightly frustrated son. "Go on, then, sweetheart," she told the girl with an indulgent smile. "Just don't play in the water like you did the last time, OK?"

Ginger's face fell a little, but she nodded and hopped out of her seat and headed toward the back of the plane. She was getting tired of coloring pictures, and most of her toys other than Bear had been packed away in one of the suitcases that she couldn't get at right now. She'd had no idea that this trip was going to be SO long…

"Be patient with her, Jarod," Margaret soothed her son from across the aisle of the little jet. "This is her first very long trip – and just think how good it is that she's talking to you and letting you know how she feels now."

"I know," Jarod sighed. "I just guess I used to watch all those television shows about kids bugging their parents with an 'are we there yet' every ten seconds and thought that it was broad parody – and had no idea that it was too true to be funny!"

"Actually, considering everything, she's doing pretty good for a seven year old," Margaret told him with a smirk of amusement. "I can remember traveling with Emily at that age – Ginger is lot more patient than your sister ever thought of being."

"That's encouraging, I think," Jarod shot his mother a chagrined look.

"You know, you could play a game with her when she gets back," she suggested with raised eyebrows at the tone in his voice. "Just remember she's a little kid and likes to win every once in a while, and you should be able to keep her nicely entertained…"

"She doesn't play chess," Jarod complained in surprise.

"I'm not talking about THOSE kinds of games," Margaret chuckled. "You could try one of those simple games that you play with pencils and paper. Kids love those."

"I never learned any of them," he reminded her pointedly. "You'd have to teach me first."

Margaret sighed and crooked her finger for him to join her in Ginger's seat. She stood and pulled Ginger's playtime backpack from the overhead compartment and removed a blank piece of paper from the back of one of the notebooks. Taking her seat again, she took a couple of minutes putting a grid of dots all over it.

Jarod watched her with an intent look, and then gazed at her when she looked up, finished. "Now what?"

"Each of us takes turns putting a single line between two of the dots. If the line finishes a square, then you get to draw another line. The one with the most boxes at the end, wins. Try it."

Mother and son bent over the paper silently for a long time, each drawing lines, and then started to chuckle at each other as the game got closer to being finished. Finally Jarod looked up at his mother in surprise. "How the heck did you get four more than I did?"

"Superior intellect and the fact that I've played this before," she grinned at him. "But you'll probably beat the tar out of Ginger if you're not careful, so give her a fighting chance, OK?"

"Speaking of whom," Jarod looked around. "She's not out of the rest room yet."

Margaret sighed. "She's playing in the water again, I'll bet you…"

"No takers!"

"I'll get her," she said, rising. "You make up the next grid and be ready to play with your little girl for a while. Meanwhile, I'll try to get some sleep – I never do sleep well before a big trip. I want to be a little bit rested when we get to Delaware."

Jarod flipped the paper over that he and his mother had used to play their game and began making a similar grid of dots. He smiled to himself when he heard a frustrated, "Gamma!" come out of the tiny rest room, and looked up when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Ginger's tee shirt looked a little water-splattered, and she definitely looked as if she'd been caught in the act.

"Let's hope its nice and warm when we get to Delaware," he told her as he held out and arm and had her walk into his embrace. "You look like you need some quality time in a wading pool."

"Daddy," Ginger snuggled against her father, "nuffing to do. Me tired of sitting."

"Grandma just taught me a new game – wanna learn to play it with me?" he replied after giving her a little squeeze.

"Can Bear help?" she asked, glancing over at where Margaret had put Bear in Jarod's former seat.

"Sure he can, Sprite," Jarod told her and let her go so that she could scamper and fetch her favorite toy. "Here," he pointed to Margaret's former seat, "you sit where Grandma was, and she'll sit where I was a little bit ago."

Ginger peered up at him with sparkling eyes. "How we play this?"

As his daughter bent her head to watch the fast-moving game intently after he'd explained the few rules to her, Jarod turned and shot his mother a glance of deep gratitude – only to find her with her seat reclined back and eyes closed. He chuckled quietly to himself and turned back to see just how well his new daughter could do at a competitive game like this.

He'd have to remember this game – the potential it held for giving a quick assessment of intelligence and reasoning abilities for the very young was tremendous. Why, he found himself wondering silently, had Sydney never taught him this one?

Colonel Fox pulled his sedan to a stop in front of the little cement pillbox building that housed the Blue Cove Police Department and local jail. His office had received a call that morning that the Air Force officer being held there had been demanding to speak to someone in authority, and a quick call to Admiral Samson's office had confirmed that even the senior office had thought that giving the jailed man an ear at least once wouldn't do any harm.

"Officer," he said as he walked through the door and up to the counter, "my name is Colonel Fox, and I received a call from a prisoner you're holding…"

"Yeah," Officer Donaldson nodded and shoved a sign-in clipboard across the counter. "Sign yourself in and we can check in your weapon, and then you can go back there. He's sure been making an awful lot of noise about wanting to talk to somebody."

Fox quickly scrawled his name into the place indicated by the officer's pudgy finger and then pushed the clipboard back across the counter.

"Your weapon," Donaldson said next and placed a tag on the counter. "Fill this out, and we'll lock your weapon in our safe until you're ready to leave."

Fox retrieved the pen and filled out both parts of the tag and then laid his service pistol on the counter next to it. Donaldson quickly attached the tag to the trigger guard and tore off the receipt half of the tag to hand it to the military man. "OK," he said finally, pushing the buzzer to let Fox through, "follow me."

Obviously Blue Cove was not the most prosperous community, Fox thought to himself as he walked past desks that looked as if they'd been purchased in the fifties and through a metal door that looked as if it hadn't been painted in the last decade. The jail, it seemed, was at the very back of the building – two cells with no privacy whatsoever, separated one from the other by nothing but bars. In one, a man was lying on a pallet-thin mattress and snoring away loudly, and the floor looked as if it had been recently hosed down. In the next, a military officer sat on the edge of his mattress and sprang to attention the moment he saw a fellow Air Force officer.

"Chairs are over there," Donaldson pointed to a pair of folding chairs leaning against the wall. "Give a pound on the door there when you're ready to leave."

"Thank you," Fox told the officer and then patiently waited until the metal door had clanged closed again before turning to face Stiller. "My name is Fox," he told the man in the cell in a brisk and business-like tone. "I've been sent down here to listen to what you have to say, so start talking."

"Are you a lawyer?" Stiller asked, not relaxing from his posture of attention.

"I was the lead investigator responsible for rounding up your colleagues," Fox replied sharply. "If you wanted a lawyer, all you had to do is…"

"No," Stiller shook his head. "A lawyer would be telling me to keep my yap shut – and what I want is to testify against the others in exchange for a reduced sentence."

"I can't guarantee you anything," Fox told him honestly. "And whether or not I even present your information depends on just what kind of information you have to exchange. No matter what, you ARE going to be court-marshaled."

"I realize that," Stiller snapped. "I want some assurances…"

"You aren't going to get them," Fox snapped back. "So either you start talking, or I figure that this was just a mammoth waste of my time and government money and head back to DC."

"I can give you names," Stiller told him in a slightly quieter tone, as if still worried that his talking to the authorities could be overheard by those who could make life very difficult.

"What kind of names?"

The jailed officer relaxed a little. "Brigadier General Douglas Curtis, for one – he was my direct superior and ordered me to pressure the Centre scientist to try to convince her to restart one of the projects she'd been in charge of at the Centre…"

"We have plenty of evidence against General Curtis," Fox told him with a shrug. "So that part of it is old news. Tell me something I don't know."

"Colonel Harris of the Pentagon…"

"Is behind bars too." Fox looked at Stiller tiredly. "You're still not saying anything I don't already know."

"The Centre isn't the only place I've been acting as liaison for," Stiller said, his voice growing tight with worry. "Sure, the Centre was the main contractor for the projects we were funding – but it wasn't the only place we were dealing with."

"Keep talking," Fox said and finally felt he had a decent enough reason to reach for one of those folding chairs and put it nicely out of reach outside the bars of Stiller's cell.

Stiller resumed his seat on the edge of the thin mattress and leaned forward slightly to put his elbows on his knees. "Through the Centre, we've had contact with an off-shore firm known as the Triumvirate. I've been sent to Africa at least a couple of times to run interference on the projects that they've been involved in."

"Who have you contacted, and what projects are these?" Fox asked, now drawing out a notebook and beginning to take notes.

"Most training projects for intelligence operatives and armed forces to be deployed in black ops settings," Stiller began, "and most of my dealings were directly with members of the consortium board – specifically a man by the name of Otamo Ngawe."

"So, let me get this straight," Fox scratched his head with his pen and looked through the bars at Stiller. "Funding from corporations were fed to lobbyists, who then handed the funds over to legislators in your group, who THEN handed the money over to foreigners to pay for further military training for US troops?"

"Not exactly. The Africans weren't training American military personal, sir," Stiller shook his head. "They were training mercenaries – and the money was going to pay retired US officers to handle the training on foreign soil, using weapons and other products provided to us by the Centre, to avoid detection by US law enforcement and categorization as a militia."

Fox was astounded. "Did the corporations who donated to the lobbyists have the slightest idea where the money was ultimately going?"

"Of course they did," Stiller replied, shocked at the idea that they might not have been. "All of the involved corporations stood to make a hefty profit as a result of destabilization of certain key areas of the globe — areas that the official government would meet a great deal of resistance trying to influence one way or the other."

"For example…"

"Well, think about it," Stiller challenged the Air Force officer on the other side of the bars. "Are you aware of just what Project Black Hole entailed?"

"I have a rough idea…"

"OK, then put that rough idea into this scenario: we quietly take several of the prisoners still stuck in Guantanamo, erase their personalities and substitute personalities that have been tailored to serve the interests of our unofficial forces in the Middle East. We handle all the processes in their native tongue, so that when we're through with them, they'll blend in easily in their home environment, but be disposable wedges within Afghan or Iraqi society. Some of them might even be trained as assassins."

"Good heavens!" Fox's eyes were wide. The implications of what this man was telling him were huge — and unthinkable. "Will you sign a statement regarding all of this?"

"What will it buy me?" Stiller knew better than to let this information get away for free — without a statement with his signature on it, it would take investigators weeks if not months to figure out all of the nuances of the group's activities.

"I'll talk to the Judge Advocate General — I'll see what he might be willing to offer you in exchange for your testimony at military courts-marshal as well as any civilian proceedings that might come as a result."

Stiller folded his arms and leaned back in a slouch against the brick wall behind him. "I'll need an offer on the table before I sign anything."

Fox rose and carefully and quietly filed the folding chair back where he'd found it, his temper rising at the audacity of the man — and the fact that he DID indeed possess information the investigation needed desperately. "I'll let you know what the Judge Advocate General has to say."

"Maybe you can even get me transferred to a military facility one of these days?" Stiller suggested, figuring he had nothing to lose at the moment. "This place is drafty and…" He cast a disparaging glower in the direction of the still-snoring man in the next cell. "…beneath my dignity as an officer in the United States Air Force."

Finding it hard to keep from laughing out loud at the thought that the man had any dignity to get beneath after all he'd done, Fox walked over to the metal door and pounded on it with a heavy fist. "I'll be in touch, Colonel." He wanted to get out of there, to get in touch with Admiral Samson and pass along what he'd learned. Perhaps there would be a way to make use of Stiller's information without having to deal with the man for it.

Stiller was a slime, Fox decided. If there was a way to rob him of any advantage, he was going to make sure THAT was the way things went down.

Jarod reached over and fingered a wayward tendril of dark hair out of Ginger's face as she nestled against his shoulder and dozed, and then shook her shoulder gently. "We're getting ready to land, Sprite — we're almost there."

Ginger blinked several times to orient herself, then tipped in the opposite direction so that she could peer out the porthole at the ground which seemed to be coming closer and closer. She pointed at a spot that Jarod couldn't see. "We land there, Daddy?"

Jarod unfastened his seatbelt very quickly and half-rose to see what she was pointing at. He nodded as he dropped back into his seat and buckled himself back in. "That's right, sweetheart. That's where we land."

Across the aisle from the pair, Margaret roused and blinked, then straightened her seat. "Already?" she asked.

"You've been asleep for a while, Mom," Jarod answered. "A couple of hours at least."

Margaret pushed some of her red and silver hair back away from her face. "At least I feel a little more refreshed," she commented as she watched her granddaughter watch the landing process out the window. "I'd forgotten how tiring cross-continental or transcontinental flights can get."

"I'm glad this is the last one for me for a while," he agreed with her and then peered over Ginger's head at the rapidly closing ground.

"Daddy, we going fast!"

"Yes, we are," he chuckled, enjoying his daughter's experience of discovery and fascination. "And look," he pointed at the edge of the runway now easily visible, "there's Mommy, waiting for us."

"Dat Her's car?"

"No," Jarod said after a moment, "that's a car that belongs to the Centre — it's bigger than either your Mommy's car or Grandpa Sydney's."

"You gots car a too, Daddy?"

"Yes," he told her with an indulgent glance at his mother at yet another question and answer session. "My car is here already. The one I was using in California was a rental."

Ginger squeaked and grabbed for her father's hand as the little jet finally touched ground again and the ride turned rough again after so many hours of smooth travel. "We goed past them's car!" she chirped excitedly.

"We'll turn around and come back to it," Jarod promised his daughter. "You'll see."

Ginger had both of her hands at the base of the window and watched as the jet found the end of the runway and then, as her father had promised, seemed to do a very tight turn around and start back in the direction they'd just come in. Soon enough the jet was pulling to a stop not far from the limousine, and Ginger pointed. "Her's here!"

Jarod peeked over her head. "Yup, she sure is…"

"Who dat wit' Her?"

"That," he announced with a smile, "is your Grandpa Sydney. I was hoping he'd come out to greet us." He bent and released his daughter's seatbelt, and then his own. "Let me get you your backpack now, sweetheart — it's almost time to get off the plane."

"Dere Davy!" Ginger exclaimed and began to wave. "Hims seed me!"

"C'mon, Sprite," Jarod held the backpack out to her so that she could slip it over a shoulder. He already had his computer case and carry-on bag down and was handing his mother her carry-on. "Time to go say hi to Mommy."

"Daddy…" Ginger turned a suddenly apprehensive face up to her father.

"Let me take your stuff, Jarod," Margaret could almost hear her granddaughter's hesitancy. "You take her. She's going to need a little reassurance with strangers in the crowd here."

Jarod leaned down and caught his daughter up into his arms and then reached over and snared the computer case back from his mother. "I can get this one, Mom." He slung it casually over his free shoulder. "You go first — I'll follow."

By the time Margaret's feet had finally touched the ground, Miss Parker and Davy had come forward and had her enveloped in a hug. "Maggie, it's so good to see you again," Miss Parker told her as she kissed her future mother-in-law's cheek."

"And you," Margaret smiled and then bent to Davy. "And you too," she kissed him on the cheek.

"I'd like you to meet my… well, I think of him as my father. Sydney Green, this is Margaret Russell, Jarod's mother." Miss Parker turned and gestured in Sydney's direction.

"Mrs. Russell," Sydney said in his musical accent, limping forward on just one crutch. He put out a hand and instead of shaking hers, raised it to his lips. "I'm delighted to meet you at long last."

"And I'm very glad to meet you too," Margaret said, a little surprised and flattered at the very continental gesture. "Jarod hasn't told me half as much about you as I want to know."

Miss Parker turned and focused all her attention on the tall man carrying the little girl down the few steps to the ground. "There you two are," she sighed to nobody in particular and took the last few steps to throw her arms around them both. It was in that moment that she knew that there was nothing that felt half as good as the sensation of having Jarod's arm slip around her waist and hold her tightly to him again. "God, I've missed you!" she exclaimed after Jarod bent and kissed her gently.

"I've missed you too," he agreed, and then turned to look at Ginger. "What do you say?"

"Hi," Ginger said in a small voice.

Miss Parker's mouth dropped open, and then her hand was cradling the side of Ginger's head. "You're talking now?" She turned stunned grey eyes on the Pretender. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"We wanted to surprise you, didn't we, Sprite?" he asked, to which his little girl nodded vigorously.

"Can I have a hug?" Miss Parker asked in a soft and hesitant voice, and held her hands out to her new daughter.

Ginger thought for a moment and then reached and let Her taker her and Bear from Daddy's grasp. She looked into those pretty grey eyes for a long moment and then wrapped her arms around Her neck and snuggled down. "Me glad see oo," she told Her softly. It was true — after She had left them in California, there had been a hole in her life.

"Oh, I'm glad to see you too, baby," Miss Parker whispered with a lump in her throat. She carefully touched Bear's arm. "I see he's all better now." Ginger nodded somberly. "What's his name?"

"Bear."

"Has he been taking good care of you?"

"Uh-huh…" Ginger cradled her Bear to her. "An' me take care him too."

"I'm sure you have been," Miss Parker smiled widely. What a thrill it was to have this charming little girl in her arms, actually talking to her rather than cringing back and running away. Still, there was someone Ginger had yet to meet. "I want you to meet somebody very special," she said and carried Ginger over to where Sydney was standing with Margaret. "This is your Grandpa Sydney," she said softly, watching closely as her old friend finally could get a good look at the child in her arms.

Sydney's eyes widened and he glanced into Miss Parker's eyes sharply before returning to stare at the child. His mouth opened as if to speak, and then he closed it again. It was impossible, but the little girl in Miss Parker's arms bore a remarkable — almost uncanny — resemblance to his little sister, lost so many years ago in the Holocaust.

"This is Ginger," Miss Parker continued the introduction cautiously, knowing that her old friend had just had his world rocked yet again, as she had suspected he would. "This is your new granddaughter, Jarod's little girl."

"My God, Parker!" was all he could say, and another glance at Miss Parker told him that she knew exactly what he was talking about. Slowly he put out a hand to touch the little girl's back very softly, very gently. Cautious and wary dark eyes watched his every movement as he straightened a braid and then touched one sparkling butterfly with a tentative finger. He turned startled chestnut eyes to look at his former protégé. "She's beautiful, Jarod."

Ginger tipped her head against Her shoulder and watched with great interest as the man that She'd introduced as Grandpa Sydney was suddenly enveloped by a warm hug from Daddy. "It's good to see you up and about again, Sydney," Jarod was saying as he clapped the older man on the back. Grandpa seemed a little dazed, but finally hugged Daddy back again before turning to stare yet again at Ginger.

She turned to look at Her again, then squirmed a bit. "Me say hi Davy, please?" she asked Her.

"Absolutely," Miss Parker responded and put Ginger down.

"Hey there!" Davy exclaimed the moment his little sister was in reach and wrapped an awkward arm around her shoulder. "I'm glad you're here."

"Hi Davy," Ginger answered with a shy smile. "Me glad see oo too."

"Mom! Sprite's talking!" Davy exclaimed after picking his jaw up off the tarmac.

"I know," she told him, then turned to Sydney and Margaret behind him. "Well, I suppose if we all want to get in the car…" She nodded at the pilot, who had the storage compartment of the small jet open and had the larger pieces of luggage already on the ground, and he began carrying them to the limousine while she pressed the key and opened the trunk for him. "Deb and Kevin are babysitting our supper at Sydney's — I figured we'd eat there and then head home after that."

At a very faint sound from behind him, Sydney tore his eyes away from the dark-haired child and gave a glance to Jarod's mother — only to find her looking around in carefully disguised concern and suspicion. "Mrs. Russell — is everything all right?"

"I was just wondering," she replied as Jarod's attention came back to her at Sydney's comment, and she then directed her question at Miss Parker. "Where are the sweepers?"

Miss Parker's face smoothed into understanding. "I didn't think we needed any this afternoon — do you?"

Margaret blinked. A Centre limousine with not a sweeper in sight — the very concept strained at the imagination after all these years of fear and distrust. "No," she said finally, "I suppose not…"

"I think you'll find that many things you thought you knew about the Centre have changed a great deal lately, Mrs. Russell," Sydney soothed at her in his most gracious tone of voice.

"It's going to take some getting used to," Margaret confided shakily.

"I can imagine," he commented understandingly. "You've had good reason to be wary for a very long time."

Miss Parker looked at Jarod with the beginnings of a smile. Contrary to her fears, Sydney and Margaret seemed to be getting along well enough so far — obviously Jarod must have spoken to her more effectively than she'd expected, and Sydney was plainly going out of his way to try to make the woman feel at home. "C'mon, folks, into the car," she urged. "I don't know about you people, but I'm starting to get hungry. Jarod, you can sit up front with me," she grinned at him mischievously, "Syd, you can keep Maggie and the kids company, can't you?"

Although he gave her a less than confident look, Sydney's voice was soft and steady. "I think that can be arranged…" He shifted his crutch so that he was no longer standing in the open door of the limousine. "Davy…" he called.

"C'mon!" Davy caught at his little sister's hand, and the two of them scrambled into the roomy passenger area.

Margaret chuckled at the way Davy was already taking charge of his little sister, a chuckle that she heard echoed from Sydney. "They were getting thick as thieves in Monterey, before Davy and Missy left," she explained quickly, "and it looks like they're going to pick up right where they left off." At Sydney's gesture, she climbed into the car and then reached out to help handle the crutch as the injured man maneuvered himself into the seat next to Davy.

Jarod slipped into the passenger seat next to Miss Parker. "It's quite a treat to be driven around in a Centre limousine by the Chairman herself," he quipped with a mischievous smirk as she turned the key and started the engine.

"Don't get too used to it, Pez-head," she smirked back. "And you'll probably have to help me calm your mom down when we reach Sydney's — the sweeper who brought this over from the Centre garage is waiting there to take it back."

"She'll be OK," Jarod assured her as she nosed the long vehicle through the gate to the airstrip and onto the access road that led to the two-lane highway that would take them to Blue Cove.

Davy had immediately begun to chatter at his grandmother. "You shoulda seen it, Grandma! Steven hit a double, then I got on, and then Greg blasted the first pitch right on out of the diamond!"

"I'll have to be sure to come by and watch one of your games while I'm here," Margaret smiled at her grandson. "So, tell me all about the position you play…"

Sydney found that he couldn't stop staring at the little girl who sat across from him and stared back with dark and wary eyes. She was such a tiny thing, much smaller than most seven-year-olds he'd ever seen. A relatively new teddy bear was clasped tightly to her chest. This was ridiculous, he thought to himself, to be so stymied by a small child who seemed as unsure of him as he was of her. No doubt his reaction wasn't making her any more comfortable around him either.

He motioned to the bear with a restrained finger. "What is your bear's name?"

"Bear," she answered simply. This Grandpa Sydney talked funny – she could understand the words, but they sounded… different… when he said them. And Daddy seemed to like him a lot — that helped some. "What wrong your leg?" she pointed to his bad knee.

"I hurt my knee and the doctor had to fix it," he explained simply. "It's still trying to get better again."

That seemed straightforward enough, and Ginger accepted the explanation with a blink. Then Davy was calling upon him to confirm something he was trying to tell Grandma, and Ginger watched as Grandpa turned his attention to her new brother and helped him tell his story. Davy seemed to like Grandpa a lot too — but then, he'd like the Big Man too…

And Grandpa wasn't a small man. When Daddy had given him a hug, she'd seen how the two had been almost the same height — and Daddy was TALL. She snuggled into her Grandma's side as the three others seemed to have a rather lively conversation going, happy to have Grandma with her and happy to just sit and watch.

Margaret looked down as she felt Ginger lean into her arm and then lifted her arm to wrap it around her granddaughter comfortingly. A glance told her what Ginger was uneasy about, and Margaret shot Sydney an understanding glance when she saw that he had noticed the girl's shyness and was feeling regretful. "She takes a while to warm up to strangers," she found herself explaining again.

"Parker told me a little of her history," Sydney replied. "She's actually doing quite well, considering."

"Do you remember me telling you about the tree house at Grandpa Sydney's?" Davy aimed his question at his little sister. Ginger shook her head against her grandmother's chest. "Well, I have this really neat tree house there. Maybe we can go check it out before dinner?"

"'Kay," Ginger agreed shyly. "What a tree house?"

Davy stared and gaped. "You've never seen a tree house?"

"I think there are a lot of things that you're going to be able to show your sister for the first time," Sydney told his grandson gently. "She's going to need you to help show her all the things to do and teach her the rules we live by."

"I can do that," Davy grinned at Sydney and then at his little sister. "We're going to have so much fun, Sprite..."

"Sprite?" Sydney's brows folded.

"That's Jarod's nickname for her," Margaret said, cuddling the girl just a little closer. "I guess Ethan was the one who said she looked like a wood sprite, and it just caught on."

"Sprite," Sydney pronounced again, bringing the dark eyes back to look at him attentively. "You do look a bit like a fairy child."

Ginger blinked. Grandpa knew the private name Daddy called her already — without being told? Maybe She was right, and he WAS a special person!

Lawler stared at the package that had landed on his desk for a long moment before reaching out for it eagerly and slicing it open to get to the contents. He pulled another thick sheaf of documents from the manila and began reading immediately — and began to smile.

The very first document in this latest anonymous offering was a missing person's report dated 1963 for a five-year-old boy named Jarod Russell. It seemed that the boy had vanished from his bedroom in his parents' home in Baltimore in the middle of the night. The document that followed was dated nearly a year later, and the officer in charge of the case had ruled that the case had gone utterly cold and had been filed away to release resources for more current endeavors.

The next few documents were attempts by the boy's father, a Major Charles Russell of the US Air Force, to get authorities to reopen the case of his son's disappearance, complete with allegations of kidnapping on the part of a Delaware organization known as the Centre. The pleas were impassioned, and responses to those pleas sympathetic but firm: no new information had been presented, and what information did exist led nowhere.

Interestingly enough, there was another missing person's report filed three years later that detailed the unexplained disappearance of another Russell child – another son, this one named Kyle. Lawler hauled out the first envelope and sifted through the documents that it contained until he found the one he was looking for: a Centre memo listing the eight children designated as Red Files. There it was: the name Kyle was fifth on the list. Lawler turned back to the new information and found that the Russells had once more tried to keep law enforcement involved and interested in investigating the disappearance of now two of their children, to no avail. Once more, evidence and information was scarce, and even the new case was eventually relegated to the bin of unsolved and unsolvable cases and left on a shelf to gather dust.

The next complete file folder contained reports on intelligence tests that had been run on selected subjects designated only by alphanumeric sequences 'RF-1' and 'RF-5' – subjects whose results essentially tested off all the established charts of intelligence. A Centre psychiatrist – Dr. Sydney Green – filed half of these documents between April and October of 1963, and another Centre psychologist –Dr. William Raines – had filed the other half between April and October of 1966. The insinuation was unavoidable – 'RF-1' was the impersonal way the Centre classified the child Jarod, and 'RF-5' was Kyle.

From there on, however, the documentation showed that the training given each subject diverged greatly. 'RF-1' had been given concentrated schooling in the sciences and disciplines of strategy and logic. Disturbingly, 'RF-5' had been given basic educational training, but his curriculum had included marksmanship and martial arts training. Jarod had become a scientific genius, where Kyle evidently had been trained in the arts of sabotage and assassination.

By the time Lawler had worked his way through the folder, he was beginning to feel sorry for both Red File subjects. 'RF-5' had been given rigorous training in physical and psychological endurance and survival skills, and some of the reports detailed what amounted to torture sessions that the boy had been expected to weather without complaint or outcry – and the description of the punishment that he'd earned when he didn't endure quite as expected was brutal.

'RF-1', on the other hand, had moved into an entirely new area of research and was doing complex and detailed simulation problem-solving and predictive exercises for his handler. Some of the simulations that the boy had been expected to virtually relive were horrific – he had been expected to relive the Apollo 5 accident where all the astronauts had burned to death, a submarine accident where the personnel involved had slowly suffocated at the bottom of the ocean, and several others just as terrifying. He would be presented with scenarios and was expected to accurately predict how the situation would be resolved, or carried out, and what additional equipment or supplies would be needed for the outcome to be as desired. What was more, he was starting to be expected to run chemical and biological experiments and work through complex problems in pharmacology and weaponry that the Centre then could sell both to the American government and abroad as it saw fit.

The final folder held copies of signed contracts between the Chairman of the Centre at the time, a Mr. Charles Parker, and any number of individuals representing foreign governments and military men from the US Armed Forces. Each contract in the folder was accompanied by a news story detailing where a situation that Lawler had read about in the folder regarding the boys' training had been moved to the real-world arena – more often than not resulting in death and chaos for whatever party was opposed to the purchaser of the simulation information. Some of the contracts were for outright killings – Lawler could only guess that it had been 'RF-5' who had ended up being assigned the hit.

The information on 'RF-5' dwindled over the years, but 'RF-1' apparently continued to do as his handler and the administration of the Centre told him to do until September of 1995, when there was a memo from Mr. Parker to Centre Security, authorizing a search team to retrieve "'RF-1' – hereby to be referred to as Jarod' as soon as possible. Here was the first blatantly obvious sign that 'RF-1' WAS Jarod Russell, a child stolen from his parents in 1963.

A final, thin folder contained ten reports filed by 'M. Parker' on the progress being made in the search for Jarod. Each report listed as team-members M. Parker, Dr. Sydney Green, and Lazlo Broots. Lawler found himself grinning like a fool – each of the reports ended with the line "subject evaded capture" which, he was sure, would grate on anybody forced to file such reports time after time.

Lawler sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head and considered all the information he'd just received, in light of the information that he'd already received. He jumped, however, when the phone on his desk began to jangle.

"Lawler."

"Did you get it?" Lawler grimaced – the whisper was getting very old.

"Yeah, I got it. Interesting reading," he allowed.

"So? Did I get you what you needed?" the voice asked.

"For the most part," Lawler told him. "You neglected to include any information that I could follow up myself – like the present location of the Russell family, or biographies of the main characters listed…"

"You're a smart man," the whisper answered him, "I'm sure you'll find a way to rip away the masks of anonymity that these people have enjoyed all this time. As a matter of fact, I know I've given you enough that if you dig in the right places, you should be able to uncover even more interesting reading all on your own now."

"Wait a minute…"

"I'll be watching to see just what you do with all this information, Mr. Lawler. Are you going to sit on it because the public is in love with the pretty Centre Chairman who descended into the bowels of hell to rescue her staff – or are you going to step up to the challenge of uncovering one of the most insidious organizations the US has ever spawned?"

"I need…"

"Good night, Mr. Lawler. Remember, I'll be watching." The line was disconnected in Lawler's ear with no further ado.

"Damn!" he swore quietly and looked down at the file folders and documents that covered his desk. Yes, there was more than enough to write at least the beginnings of an expose – and if this whisperer was right, he had enough to give him clues as to where to do his own digging that would a bit more productive than his superficial Internet search. After all, asking the Centre website about the Pretender Project hadn't earned him a "No such project" error message, but rather a request for a password.

That meant that more information on this Pretender Project probably lay in the Centre mainframe. Or had – before the explosion.

Lawler turned on his word processing program and, after staring at the blue screen for a long moment, began to type: "The world has been awed and enchanted by the actions of a corporate Chairman who put her very life on the line for her staff when a bomb ripped through her headquarters. But how many of us know anything about the organization she heads, known as The Centre?"

He stared at his opening paragraph with the beginnings of a smile. Sometimes, great reporting began with knowing what questions to ask and put before the public so that it was the public that could begin to demand answers.

"C'mon – this way!" Davy urged, grabbing his little sister by the hand the moment she had deposited her backpack in an out-of -the-way corner of the den. Ginger trotted obediently behind him as he dragged her toward the sliding glass door that opened onto a large and verdant grassed area bounded by shrubs, flowers and several large trees near the back fence. One of those large trees had wooden slats that had been nailed to the trunk, and it was to this one that Davy dragged Ginger. "That," he exclaimed proudly, pointing almost straight up at the boxy construct sitting high in the branches, "is a tree house."

Ginger looked up into his face with eyes that shined with excitement and a little bit of fear. "Is high – how get up there?"

Davy demonstrated how to place feet and hands on the slats that served as steps up the trunk. "See? It's easy!"

Ginger looked up at the tree house with longing, but shook her head. "Me scared to go up. Only got one arm," she pointed out, indicating how she had to keep hold of Bear to keep him from falling to the ground.

Davy let go and dropped to the ground near Ginger and examined the situation. "You can put Bear inside your shirt, so that he's safe and you don't have to hold on to him," he suggested, lifting his own tee shirt to demonstrate what he meant.

With wide eyes, Ginger pulled her tee shirt out of her pants and slipped Bear between the stretchy cotton material and her skin, then smiled when she found that Davy was right and Bear was secure without her having to hang onto him. "What next?" she demanded.

Margaret smiled to watch her grandson patiently begin to show his new little sister the trick to climbing the hand-made ladder up into the old oak tree. "That's what she's needed," she commented to Miss Parker, who was cleaning vegetables to go with her dinner, "a big brother who would be patient with her and help her."

"This is very much what Davy has needed too," Miss Parker replied softly. "He never would say very much about it, but I knew that he always wanted a brother or sister – and a father. Syd has been a great Grandpa for him, but I could tell he felt there was always something missing from his world." She glanced at the older woman standing at the doorway. "When he found out that Jarod was his father, I don't think I've ever seen him so happy."

"It must have been hard raising him by yourself," Margaret remarked gently, "even if you did have help."

"It made me grow up finally," Miss Parker told her as she reached for another carrot. "I couldn't just leave him in the bowels of the Centre to be raised like another research subject – and once I had custody, I found out that I had to put his interests first, always."

"You didn't know he was your son?"

Miss Parker shook her head. "Not until Sydney had Broots run the genetic testing again and asked him to stand over it so the results couldn't be tampered with," she told her. "I knew that the chances that he was Da… Mr. Parker's son were remote – but exactly how he'd come to be I'd never been sure. I just accepted the cover story because it was easier than doing the research. It was Syd who got suspicious after Jarod came back and he saw Jarod and Davy together." She slipped a glance at the older woman. "Syd may have his faults and weaknesses, Maggie, but he's a GOOD man…"

"You don't have to defend him to me all the time, you know," Margaret told her gently. "I'm not out for blood, Missy — certainly not his."

Miss Parker blushed and turned to face her future mother-in-law. "I'm sorry – I didn't realize I was being that obvious. It's just that Sydney saved my life, and right now he's going through a really rough time…"

"He saved your life?" Margaret moved from watching her grandchildren to sitting at the kitchen table and watching her hostess' face.

"I was… upset… when Jarod disappeared finally – when he decided to stop playing cat and mouse with the Centre and find his family. I did something very stupid – got drunk and wrapped my car around a telephone pole – and then did the one really smart thing I've ever done in my life: had the police call Syd. Sydney bailed me out, cleaned me up and helped me put my life back together. I'd never really had anybody show that they cared about me very much since my mother died – except Jarod, that is – and Sydney and then the Broots turned around and gave me a sense of family when I thought I had nobody left in the world." She shrugged and glanced at Margaret. "Then, when I adopted Davy, he was right there again, helping me out and supporting me whenever I needed it."

"But Sydney was just a fellow Centre employee to you, wasn't he? Just someone at the Centre that you'd known a long time?"

Miss Parker shook her head. "When my mother died, he was the only adult to really try to comfort me – and when Daddy used to bring me to work, Sydney was officially the one responsible for me until Daddy had me brought around to go home. It didn't occur to me until much later just how much of my time with Jarod prowling the Centre happened because Sydney turned a deliberately blind eye to things — how he enabled our friendship by not preventing it as he probably should have. He taught me things too, after hours when Jarod had gone back to his room and we were alone — he taught me how to waltz, how to play chess… He was like an uncle to me until Daddy sent me away to school. And then, even while he was a colleague during the days we were searching for Jarod together, he was more than just an acquaintance or colleague. But it took that stupid accident to finally strip away all the obstacles to his becoming a real foster-father for me." She looked at Margaret evenly. "I love him very much, Maggie. Until Jarod showed up, he and Davy WERE my world — and he's still a very important part of it even now."

"That's why I'm here, Missy," Margaret told her sincerely. "Jarod, despite everything, is easily as fond of Sydney as he ever was of his own father – always has been, I find out now that Jarod doesn't feel he needs to hide those feelings away from me anymore. Jarod never knew, but I could see how hard it had been for him to walk away from Sydney — and you, I guess — in those first few months we were together. There were times when he and Charles would just not quite connect in a father and son way — times when Jay and Charles connected so much better— and I could see that the connection for Jarod belonged to Sydney instead. Now that I'm here, I can see how you are with him — that the connection is there for you too. I came because I wanted to see for myself what it is about him that makes Jarod willing to set aside decades of abuse and run back to his Centre keeper when his own father died." She smiled encouragingly. "Jarod told me about his latest troubles, and I promised him that I wouldn't deliberately upset him – now I give you the same promise. I just want to get to know the man, not rip him apart for having had Jarod when he really belonged to Charles and me."

"Gamma! Come look at me!" Ginger's voice called out across the lawn.

Miss Parker peeked out the window over the sink and grinned, and then turned to Margaret. "Better go check it out – Davy has her up in the tree house, with her feet dangling over the edge." She smiled back. "Thanks, Maggie – that makes me feel better."

Margaret's smile widened, and then she rose and went out the arcadia door. "My goodness, Sprite! You're certainly up high enough…"

"That went well," Jarod said as he disemboweled his huge suitcase and distributed his clothing into the right-hand side of the huge chest of drawers that sat next to the closet. The more formal sports jackets and trousers and button-down shirts from his garment bag had already found their new homes on hangers in the closet, arranged neatly next to the sizeable wardrobe Miss Parker had stored there.

"With Syd and your mom? I'll say," she responded contentedly. Dinner had been a very relaxed affair, with Deb and Kevin pretty well self-absorbed, Davy and Ginger chattering at each other happily, and the four adults chatting amiably until the time had come for children's bath-times and bedtimes.

"Deb and Kevin make a cute couple," he commented as he zipped the now-empty suitcase closed and opened his side of the closet to stow it high on the shelf. "And I have to admit that I've been expecting them to connect like this…" He closed the closet door and walked over to stand behind her as she sat at her vanity, combing out her hair. "I know what it is to see the most beautiful creature on the face of the earth as the first girl I ever saw and fall desperately, madly, in love with her right then and there."

The brush slowed as it coursed through her hair, and Miss Parker looked up into her Pretender's face as he looked down at her. "I was the slow one," she said softly. "It took me months after you finally vanished to realize how I felt. It took a few more months to finally figure out that all the anger I'd felt for you while you'd been calling me late at night and teasing me with clues wasn't really anger but actually frustration that I couldn't be with you like I wanted to."

Jarod dropped his hands to her shoulders gently and smoothed them back and forth slowly over her silky skin. "I always thought that when I found my parents and sister, that I'd be content. And, for a while, I was. But then I came back here, and discovered that I'd just been making do – that the family I wanted to put together most was the one I wanted to make with you."

Miss Parker put the brush back down on the vanity and let herself lean back against him with her eyes closed. "I can hardly believe that you're actually here – and that I don't have to worry about you ever up and disappearing ever again."

"I will never leave you again," he promised in the low voice as he bent to the side and kissed the very top of her ear. He eased the spaghetti straps of the blue nightgown over the edges of her shoulders so that he could drop kisses there too without obstruction. "Ready or not, Miss Parker, you've caught your Pretender – I do hope you have some idea what you intend to do with him."

"Oh, I have a thought or two," she answered, turning her head to the side and tipping it up so that when he bent to her again, he could capture her lips with his in a very soft and gentle kiss. "I see you're thinking what I'm thinking," she commented softly when she could speak again.

"I've thought of very little else since Mom and the kids went to bed," Jarod smirked as he put a hand down to help her to her feet so that he could gather her into his arms and kiss her again, this time more insistently.

She sighed as he deepened the kiss and pulled her even closer with one hand wrapped around her waist even as the other tangled in her hair. Her arms came up and around his neck as his hand at her back smoothed down the silky material of the nightgown from the base of her skull all the way to the top of her hips. This was what she'd been wanting and dreaming of all those lonely nights alone since he'd left for California — to have his arms around her, ready to make her his once more. When his lips finally left hers to leave a hot trail of searing kisses down the column of her throat, she finally managed, "You're entirely overdressed for this, you know…"

"For what?" he asked obtusely and returned to kiss her with all the passion that he'd been forced to put on hold until he could come back and reclaim his life with her. He'd known the happiness of finding his real family and making a life of his own with them — now he understood the complete peace that came from finding and now coming home to the woman he adored and making a life with her and their children. His hands began to wander — from smoothing down her back to curling around her slender ribs, and then moving forward to more interesting territory. Her body arched into his in anticipation, and she could feel his desire for her against her lower stomach.

"For what I have planned for you," she whispered raggedly to him as he again dragged his lips to her cheek, her ear, her forehead, her eyes. Her hands came down from around his neck and began working the buttons at the top of his polo shirt and then pulling it from beneath his belt. Then her fingers had found warm skin of their own to play with, and she ran her nails lightly up his back, making him chuckle.

He let her go long enough to jerk his shirt over his head, only to find that she made quick work of his belt and the zipper at the top of his trousers. He turned and whipped an arm at the backs of her knees to scoop her up into his embrace and step out of his puddled trousers and toed-off shoes toward the bed. "Two can play that game," he growled at her as he deposited her on the bed — only to find that she refused to let go of him and so pulled him right over on top of her.

"I sincerely hope so," she growled back, then sighed as his hands began roaming again, easily finding the tight and hard nipples of her breasts as they strained against the silk of the nightgown. "God, I love you, Jarod," she groaned as his touch set her every nerve ending afire.

"I love you too," he whispered gently. Then his lips caught hers again, and there was no more need for talk.

Sydney lay against the pillows of his daybed, staring up at the pattern the moonlight through the leaves of the oak trees in the back made on the ceiling. It had been a big day and a tiring one, and yet sleep eluded him. He knew that he should probably get up and take one of the pain pills that could knock him out for the night, but just couldn't work up the ambition to rise.

He wasn't ready to leave the wonder of a day that had allowed him to entertain Jarod's mother in his home. He literally ached, knowing exactly how she felt. He'd had the chance to speak to George Stamatis, the man who had raised HIS son, not long before Stamatis had died. He too had had a child stolen from him by the Centre, to be raised by someone else entirely. Speaking to the man — reassuring him that he'd take care of Michelle and Nicholas after Stamatis' demise — had taken a great deal of self-discipline, for the acid of bitter jealousy had raged through his veins all that time. What Mrs. Russell must be feeling, knowing that he, Sydney, had raised HER son that had been stolen from her…

Was she seething inwardly, as he had? Did she resent the obvious attachment her son felt for him in the same way that he resented Nicholas' continuing devotion to his memories of the long-dead man who had raised him? Was it worse to be a mother and come face to face with the man who had shared her child's youth when it should have been she who had wiped his tears and shown pride in his accomplishments?

How could she smile and speak so graciously and cordially with a man who had overseen and not prevented the systematic abuse of her oldest son? Certainly had Nicholas been put through even half of what Jarod had endured, he would have been ready to rip Stamatis' throat out — how was she standing to be in the same room with him without rage?

What was it that Krieg had said during those dark hours when he had held his old tormentor hostage? "I know the people you work for — I know the work you do." To his eternal shame, so did he. Even now, even with people around him who loved him, he was a monster wearing the skin of a civilized man. Maybe Jarod's mother hadn't realized that yet. Jarod knew. She would too, eventually.

It was almost ironic that by coming back to Delaware once more, Jarod had brought with him a living reminder of a lifetime twisted by Nazi torture and then Centre agendas. Jarod's little girl had never relaxed around him, continued to look up at him with those great, dark, suspicious eyes of hers that looked so much like Yvette's that it was painful. The vision of his sister's body laying amid the other corpses in the cart, eyes staring and mouth agape, assailed him mercilessly. He hadn't saved her — and he'd been useless at protecting Jarod. At best, he was a pitiful excuse of a coward who didn't deserve a second chance with a granddaughter who looked as if she'd just walked out of a sepia-toned photograph. At worst, which he suspected was closer the truth, he was a monster who deserved only a cheated mother's wrath.

He sighed. Either way, he didn't deserve sleep.

Feedback, please:


	25. Settling In

Resolutions – 25

Settling In

by MMB

Miss Parker sighed as the light from the morning sun chose that moment to begin shining right into her eyes, and she shifted and then smiled as she snuggled against Jarod's shoulder without opening her eyes at all. His arms tightened around her and he sighed as well. This was what it was all about, she decided as she lay there soaking up the reality of having the man she loved beyond reason next to her. She snorted silently at the thought that, if their positions relative to each other were considered, it would be questionable as to whether she had finally caught her Pretender or whether HE had finally caught HER.

She slipped an arm around his waist and snuggled closer, feeling him give just enough so that they both could be comfortable. It really didn't matter — they were together again and nothing would separate them again. And sometime today they would begin to discuss plans for making this living arrangement very official — as if making it official would change anything other than her name. Parker-Russell — she rolled the hyphenated name over in her mind and decided she liked the sound of it.

"Good morning," Jarod rumbled into her ear in a low and sleepy tone.

"I thought you were still asleep," she sighed back, snuggling in just a bit closer and letting her hand at his waist wander just a bit over his warm skin.

His arms closed around her and he chuckled. "Keep that up, and I'll be quite awake very soon."

She chuckled with him. "I'll have to add Energizer Bunny to my list of names for you, I swear…"

"I told you that we would need to sleep in this morning," he reminded her and then nibbled on an earlobe. "I thought you understood my meaning."

"I did." Miss Parker rolled and looked down into Jarod's dancing dark eyes. "Mind you, I'm not complaining," she told him with a smile and then bent down to kiss him. "Not complaining one little bit."

"That's encouraging," he smirked at her and raised his head to capture her lips in yet another fiery kiss that sent shivers of delight all the way down her spine. His hands spread wide and smoothed across the silky expanse of her back and down to the swell of her hips. When finally his lips left hers, he pulled her very close. "I've learned my lesson, I swear! I can't live without you beside me, Missy."

"Good, because I can't live without you anymore either," she whispered gently and rested against him while her heart slowly calmed down again from his kisses. "I think if you tried to leave me again, I'd have to haul out my Smith and Wesson and convince you to change your mind."

"Not in front of the kids, I hope," he chuckled again.

"The kids!" She jerked suddenly, remembering that there were other people in the house. "Jarod…"

"Hush," he calmed her, pulling her close again. "If I know my Mom, she's already got them fed and clothed at least. Besides, now that I have you to myself, I'd like to talk a bit," he smoothed his hands over her back again as if to calm her. "I've been wondering if we shouldn't start thinking about whether or not we want to have any more kids eventually — especially now that we're together again permanently."

She moved so that she could look at his face. "You mean, have a child the old-fashioned way?"

"The two we've got now we've gotten all the other ways known to man and science — surrogacy and adoption," he reminded her gently. "Don't you think we should have at least one we made together, the way parents usually have kids?"

"I'm not so young anymore, Jarod," she countered, ignoring the tug at her heart at the idea of a baby, "and we do already have two very special children..."

"You don't want to?" he asked her with understanding in his eyes.

She snuggled back down. "I didn't say that," she sighed. "I just think that we'll need to think about it a little bit more first — there are risks involved because of my age. And we aren't even married yet."

"We'll need to talk about that today, when we're over at Syd's again," he agreed. "But we know it's going to happen — so it's a moot point. As for having a baby, the risks to you and the child would be manageable, considering that you have a talented assistant that can take a lot of the stress and pressure off of you as time goes on. Lots of women have babies at your age and do quite well at it."

"What about you?" she asked seriously. "It's one thing to accept responsibility for a child of yours that you had no way of knowing about, or for one you fell in love with after the fact of their birth," she whispered to him. "It's another thing entirely to go through the whole process – morning sickness, sleepless nights, dirty diapers… Are you really sure…"

"Whenever I thought of actually having kids of my own," he told her gently, holding her tighter, "I could never think of having them with anyone but you. All my life, I've waited for you. And I have to admit that I would like just one more child — one that you and I make together. And yes, I'm really sure I'm ready for morning sickness and whatever else goes with that."

"A baby." She smiled and settled against him again. "How ironic."

"How so?"

"Here we are, talking about the possibility of deliberately setting out to have a child, and Deb and Kevin are sitting on pins and needles hoping that they didn't accidentally conceive one while they were discovering the wonders of sex."

"And Em and Nathan are finally pregnant again after a very long time trying to give Sammy a little brother or sister," he told her, his hands smoothing across her shoulders. "Don't you think it's our turn too now?"

"We haven't exactly been careful," she reminded him pointedly. "I didn't see my doctor at all to get back on the pill after you and I finally got together — and we've never even thought about, much less had the time, to make a trip to the drug store for more mundane contraceptives. We're kinda in the same position Deb and Kevin are in — only now you're hoping that we HAVE…" She thought about it for a moment. "Then again, maybe that's not such a bad way to do things…"

"What are you suggesting — that we just let Nature take its course?"

"Jarod, I'm thinking that considering the amount of tinkering that the Centre has done with my system, that I may not be able to have…" She took a deep breath. "If we deliberately try – and fail – we'd be setting ourselves up for heartbreak as time goes on. I don't need any more of that, and frankly, neither do you. If, on the other hand, we simply work with whatever hand we've been dealt…" She paused and thought again. "I've often wondered just how badly I got messed up on the inside when they harvested all those ova to create those embryos back when – the batch that Davy came out of, I mean. What if they made it impossible…"

"Shhhhh…" he soothed again. "I can take letting Nature take its course for an answer. If we're meant to have a child, we'll have one – and we will love that child just as much as our others. If not, we still have Davy and Ginger — and I can be content. After all, I have you too." He kissed her forehead. "Is that what you want?"

She nodded. "I think so. If I am meant to have a child, then the sooner I do, the better. I'm not getting any younger."

There was a bump and then a crash from somewhere in the house, and finally the two in the bed could hear the sounds of Margaret's raised voice. "I suppose we should go relieve Grandma of all responsibility pretty soon," Jarod commented, tightening his hold on her.

"I'll even be nice and let you have the bathroom first," she chuckled and stretched to kiss the end of his nose. "But don't be too long."

He let go of her and rolled to his side of the bed and reached for the boxers that lay in an abandoned wad on the floor near the bed — then snagged the blue nightgown and handed it back to her. "Here."

"What? You don't like the view?"

Jarod turned. She was sitting up in bed, the bedclothes covering her legs and lower torso but having fallen away from her otherwise. She was a vision to stir the blood — dark hair tousled and bare-chested. "On the contrary, I like the view very much," he growled at her. "But if you intend for us to get downstairs and relieve my Mom anytime soon, you'll need to put that on."

With that, Miss Parker threw back the covers and stood up to walk over to him, just as naked as he was. "Then again," she said as one eyebrow quirked mischievously as she watched his expression change in reaction to the enhanced view, "sharing a shower sounds good too."

"Not letting me out of your custody, is that it?" he asked as an arm snaked out and caught her to him.

"You know the routine," she purred, her nails raking down his chest very gently, "you run, I chase."

"Promises, promises…"

"Oh, you look wonderful," Deb commented worriedly as she walked into the kitchen and caught her first glimpse of her grandfather, sitting at the table nursing a cup of hot coffee. For the first time since she'd known him, he'd come to the breakfast table unshaven and looking like he'd just roused from a bad dream. "Didn't you sleep well?"

"Not particularly," Sydney replied in a very tired voice.

"I knew I should have brought you another one of those pain pills," Kevin remarked from the doorway as he too caught sight of his wore-looking mentor. "I thought of it this morning, when I got up. Jarod will kill me for forgetting last night."

"I could have gotten up and taken one myself, you know," Sydney reminded his protégé with a grumble, then sipped at his coffee again. "I just didn't feel like it at the time."

"Sydney…" Kevin began in a cautioning tone.

"Do you want something to eat?" Deb asked, looking over the kitchen and seeing that, other than coffee, her grandfather hadn't prepared himself any breakfast — not even the toast and jam that were his regular fare. "Maybe that will help…"

"I'm not hungry, Deb," Sydney replied, finally looking up at her and trying to smile. "Thanks anyway."

"Grandpa, you've got to eat," Deb came over and put her arm around the old man's shoulders. "And you need your rest. Maybe we should call Miss Parker and have her hold off on the plans for today until you feel better."

"No…" Sydney turned and patted her hand as it lay on his shoulder. "I haven't seen Sam since he got engaged to that Chinese girl — or even met her, for that matter. And Monday, Jarod and Parker go back into the Centre to work…"

"I have to agree with Deb," Kevin said, standing up to his mentor a little and not enjoying the fact that he felt it necessary. "You're not rested and not feeling like eating. Something's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong," Sydney insisted in a tone bordering on belligerence and then scowled back and forth between the two young adults. "And don't you dare call the day's plans off, either of you. Parker has been looking forward to today, and you both know it."

"Grandpa…"

"I'll be OK, ma petite," Sydney reassured her, taking her hand and pulling her closer so that he could give her a swift hug. "Give me a chance to get some coffee in me…"

"And to eat something," Kevin insisted firmly, "or I'm calling Jarod myself."

Sydney's tired chestnuts snapped up and found that Kevin's ice-blue eyes were worried and very determined. "You wouldn't."

Kevin's gaze didn't falter. "I would — in a drop-dead minute. Be reasonable," the young Pretender relented slightly and shook his head. "I'd get eaten out by Jarod, AND Miss Parker, AND Sam, if I let this slide, Sydney — and you know it. They're coming over today, and they're smart enough they'll see the state you're in. And you know that the moment they stopped chewing on me, they'd begin chewing on YOU as well. So I'm protecting both our butts here." He lifted his face. "After all, Jarod's back — and I've seen how sometimes he's the only one who can get you to do things you don't want to."

"Grandpa, you know you wouldn't be letting US get away with this, if we were in your shoes," Deb pressed urgently. "Don't fight us so when we're only trying to take as good care of you as you would of us."

Sydney could hear the caring in their voices, and it made it even harder. He didn't deserve this kind of consideration. "I'm not trying to fight you, Deb."

"Make him some of his toast," Kevin directed her and walked toward the coffee maker to pour the two of them some coffee. "Then, once you've eaten something," he said firmly, "I'll get you set up on the CPM machine and maybe you can doze until Jarod and the others get here." He took the measure of rebellion in the older man's eye. "Unless you DO want me calling Jarod…"

"Just one piece of toast, though, Deb," Sydney ordered reluctantly. "I'm really not all that hungry – I'm not lying."

"And you'll rest until our guests get here?" Kevin insisted.

"Yes," he conceded in defeat. "I don't want you calling Jarod on his first morning home and bothering him." He looked up and shook a finger in his protégé's face. "But don't be getting any ideas that you can boss me around like this very often."

"Only when you know very well I'm doing it for your own good – I understand the terms," Kevin nodded and smiled victoriously. "What time are the troops supposed to land?"

"I think Miss Parker was talking about just a little after lunch," Deb reminded him with a fond smile for his having worked her Grandpa so easily. "I'm going to need to do a little shopping this morning to get some supplies for supper tonight." She grinned a little more widely at him. "Wanna come along?"

Kevin gave a critical eye to his mentor and then up at Deb. "We'll see how well Sydney's doing when you're ready to leave – how's that? I could give you half of one of those pain pills," the young Pretender turned to his mentor and suggested hopefully. "That way, at least you'd get a chance to get some decent sleep before everybody got here."

"And have a helluva time waking up again, no doubt," Sydney shook his head. "I don't want to be comatose at a family gathering taking place in my own house, thank you…"

"We'll make sure there's plenty of coffee for you," Deb promised. "C'mon, Grandpa – you know you need the sleep."

"You two are pushing, you know…" Sydney glowered at them both again.

"All in a good cause," Kevin retorted. "But fair enough. I'll give you a third of a pill so that it won't be quite so hard for you to wake up again – IF you promise you'll genuinely try to sleep until lunchtime. No reading through archive documents, no watching TV…"

Sydney lifted his butter knife as Deb put the plate of toast in front of him and sighed. "A quarter of a pill, and I'll do what I can – beyond that, I can promise nothing."

Had he been in a better mood, the way the young people watched over him and kept the conversation light and devoid of stress would have been humorous. As it was, he found it hard to concentrate and follow the flow of the conversation and was more than ready when Kevin was finally finished with his breakfast to limp back into the den and get himself set up again with his 'damned gizmo.' He waited patiently until Kevin brought the glass of water and hastily trimmed down pill, swallowed the pill and then settled back into his pillow again – this time actually closing his eyes.

Kevin helped Deb clean up the breakfast dishes and then peeked in to check on Sydney, smiling to himself when he found he could hear soft snoring from the daybed. With that, he walked quietly into the foyer and then out into the front yard with Sydney's cell phone, which he'd snatched from its charging cord on the kitchen counter. Miss Parker's number was one of the first on the list, and he pressed the pre-programmed number.

"This is Parker."

"Hi, Miss Parker, this is Kevin. May I speak with Jarod, please?"

"Is everything OK over there?" Her voice sounded worried.

"He didn't sleep again, and really fought having any breakfast or lying back down to nap until lunch," Kevin reported somberly. "I thought I'd better give you folks a heads-up."

"Thanks," she said and then paused. "Here's Jarod."

"Kevin," Jarod's voice greeted him "What's up."

Kevin quickly filled him in on the morning's events, finishing with, "…and if he finds out I've called you after all…"

"I'll be sure not to mention that I've spoken to you," Jarod was quick to reassure him, "and I'm glad you called." He sighed. "I'll take him aside and see if I can't get him to open up a little about what is bugging him so badly today. Any ideas?"

"Not a clue," Kevin replied, shaking his head. "The only thing he said was to admit that he hadn't slept particularly well."

"Did anything pop up with the archives yesterday before we got there?"

"No," Kevin said a little less surely. "Although we did discuss a Mr./Dr. Raines, whose name is on quite a healthy share of the documents we've been reading lately."

"Did it seem to upset him?"

"Not really," Kevin answered honestly. "I don't think that whatever it was that kept him awake last night had anything to do with anything he read."

"Well, we'll just see what happens when we get there this afternoon," Jarod announced. "Keep an eye on him, though. Make sure he actually sleeps."

"He was snoring when I snagged his cell phone to call you just now," Kevin told him guiltily.

"Make sure he stays that way," Jarod advised. "See you in a few."

"Yeah," Kevin nodded. "See you."

"Grandpa would chew you out if he knew you'd called Jarod anyway," Deb told him from the front doorway.

"He's not going to know," Kevin told her firmly, then walked up to her and gave her a big hug. "You won't tell him, and I won't either."

"What did he say?"

"He said he'd take him aside and see if he could find out some of what's eating at him." Kevin encircled Deb's waist. "And that I should keep an eye on him. I think that means that I'd probably best stick close to the house rather than go shopping with you."

"I was looking forward to having you come with me," Deb moped for a bit, and then leaned into him. "I'll be glad after I've seen the doctor tomorrow. I've missed you."

"I've missed you too," he kissed her forehead and held her close.

"It IS Sunday, you know," Becca Ashland told the FBI agents coolly as she let them into her home and led them to her parlor. "Couldn't this have waited?"

"No, ma'am," Assistant Director Berghoff shook his head. "Since, if we're lucky, a goodly portion of our investigation will conclude tomorrow, we thought that if we clued you in on what we are hoping to accomplish, you could tell us if we have enough to go to the Justice Department for arrest warrants – or if there was enough here for you to seek a Senate Ethics Hearing on these guys."

"What's going on tomorrow?" Ashland gestured for the men to take a seat.

"Senator Canfield is going to be wearing a wire so that we can listen in on his discussion with his 'friends'," Gillespie smirked triumphantly. "Seems that Canfield has grown a conscience and wants out."

Ashland gaped. "Is this true?" she asked the senior agent.

Berghoff nodded. "He got in contact with us, and he agreed to wear the wire. With any luck, we'll not only have them for all the things that they've done so far, but we can nail them for conspiracy to commit libel now."

"Why?" She looked back and forth. "What are they planning now?"

"They're going to try to make such a scandal out of old news about the Centre that it will make any investigation of THEIR activities into small potatoes," Gillespie again answered instead of his boss. "Canfield told us that this is their way of getting payback for the Centre stopping their cooperation with the kind of projects they've been funding."

"I've read some of the files," Ashland told her guests in a tight voice. "I have to admit that there must have been something incredibly wrong ethically with any organization that would have taken on those projects in the first place."

"That may well be," Berghoff agreed, "but the fact is that the present Chairman was just as uneasy about those projects as any of us might be. It was SHE who summarily put a halt to them and shipped everything back to the Pentagon – and it was their reaction to that decision that started this whole big process in the first place. To try to paint her with the sins of those who agreed to take on the projects while they were in charge there…"

"Point made," Ashland nodded finally. "So they're going to try to paint her with the sins of her predecessors, eh?"

"Canfield made a passing comment that she has some explaining to do — and I'd imagine that anybody who'd been with the Centre for as long as she had probably WOULD," Gillespie replied. "But it's all nothing but a smoke screen designed to let any scandal from their actions as Senators stay out of the public eye, and probably the eye of their constituents."

"That borders on libel."

"Or extortion — IF they push at the Centre to resume it's participation in the projects as the price for putting out the scandal fires," Berghoff added. "Frankly, considering the previous actions this crew has taken, I wouldn't put THAT past them either."

"That will make them guilty of criminal law — which will definitely made for an Ethics Hearing," Ashland assured them. "The question is, will you have enough evidence with what you hope to get on Monday to actually have them arrested?"

"We hopefully will have them on tape committing conspiracy to commit libel and/or extortion at the very least. If we do…"

"Then I'd suggest you call Justice as soon as you know – especially if you get the evidence you're hoping for. Keep me informed," Ashland told them. "Incidentally, I'll need a copy of the arrest warrants to put things in motion with the Ethics Committee."

"We'll get them to you the moment WE have them," Gillespie promised.

"Make this work," she warned Berghoff sternly. "No screw ups."

"We will," he swore, "we will."

Mei Chiang watched Sam wrap the loaves of French bread that he'd been puttering over in aluminum foil. "Are you sure that's all we have to bring?" she worried at him.

"Trust me, Mei, between Miss Parker and Deb and Sydney, there will be plenty of food," Sam grinned at her, and then reached out an arm and pulled her close. "Don't tell me you're nervous…"

"To spend the afternoon and evening at my employer's home? Of course not," she lied obviously and glibly, all too aware of the butterflies in her stomach that had been present ever since Miss Parker had extended the invitation Friday afternoon.

"We'll be at Sydney's, not Miss Parker's — and she's not so much your employer today," Sam told her softly and felt her arms slip around his waist. "Today, she's family as well as employer."

"That will be hard to remember," she commented softly.

"It takes a while," he agreed, remembering how very reluctantly he'd allowed himself to be integrated into that after-hours familial relationship and how fragile he'd believed that relationship to be until very recently, "but you'll get the hang of it eventually."

"Who all will be coming, then?"

He shook his head. "I'd be willing to bet that she's invited Tyler — she's taken a real shine to him. And I think I heard her mention that Sydney say that he wanted Crystal there too."

"I wonder if Tyler will bring Xing-Li?" Mei mused.

"That WOULD make for a full house," Sam shook his head at the thought. "Let's see, Jarod and Missy's family makes four, Sydney five, Deb and Kevin seven, you and me nine, Crystal ten, Tyler eleven, Xing-Li… I wonder just how big Sydney's dining table does get!"

"Are you sure this Sydney is up to entertaining?" she worried further. "Didn't he just get out of the hospital after being beat up or something?"

"Miss Parker thought that having family around him today with a welcome-home meal for Jarod and his little girl would do him good. That's right," he grinned down at her, "you haven't met Sydney or Deb or Kevin or Jarod or Davy yet — they're family too."

"This is a very strange family," Mei shook her head. "So few of you are actually related…"

"It's a very extended family," Sam admitted, "and we're family because we want to be as much as anything else."

"I don't think they were expecting us over there BEFORE lunch, Jarod," Miss Parker shook her head as she watched Davy patiently teaching Ginger to use a baseball mitt to catch a softball in the backyard. She turned to face Jarod and his mother, both of whom were still seated at the breakfast counter.

"Probably not," Jarod agreed as he handed her his coffee mug to rinse, "but I want a chance to talk to him BEFORE the whole mob descends. He's going to have a full house today, and convincing him to make time in his day to talk to me is going to be something that will need privacy."

"Is he that difficult to approach?" Margaret asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. "He seemed a rather amenable and easy-going person to me…"

Miss Parker took a long sip of her coffee. "Maggie, Sydney is a very complicated person. On the surface, he's as you say — easy-going, friendly — but a more intensely private man I've never met in my life. I've known him my whole life and still feel that there's a great deal about him that I don't know yet, especially about his past, his childhood — he knows my past like the back of his hand, I know his only in very vague sketchbook form. He rarely talks about Michelle or Nicholas, his son — but I know that there are some deep emotions involved there. I keep hoping that someday he'll let me into his life to the extent that I let him into mine."

"He never has shown his emotions very often," Jarod added quietly, "and when he finally does, they're that much more intense for being repressed. I'm sure it's the result of what happened in the war, that it became a survival tool that he couldn't put down once his need for it ended. I can't imagine — or rather, I should say I don't want to imagine — what having to deal with emotions locked away from the days of the Holocaust are doing to him. I was there the first time that he had to face the memory of what Krieg did to him. I think that was the beginning of his realization that he'd been both a victim and a keeper. It's very likely that the paradox of knowing both sides of such circumstances is tearing him to pieces emotionally. I'm probably the only one in any position to help him find his way out of it intact."

"You see, you don't have to do anything to make him feel guilty about what he did to Jarod," Miss Parker told Margaret softly. "He's doing an excellent job of holding himself responsible all on his own."

Margaret stared at her son. "Did you know this was going to happen?" she asked in surprise.

"I had an idea that it might get to this point," he told her with a shrug, "especially after he found those papers from Germany that essentially called his entire past after the war into question."

"Is there anything that I can do?" Margaret looked back and forth between the two.

Jarod looked at Miss Parker, and she looked back — and she then looked at the older woman. "If you could just be supportive right now — I have a feeling that he'll answer all your questions by himself eventually without being asked. But he needs a little security and sense of control of his fate," she replied somberly.

"And if we're going to go, we need to get moving," Jarod stated, rising. He went over to the back door and called through the screen, "Davy! Ginger! We're just about ready to head to Grandpa's — if you need to get anything to take with you…"

Ginger tossed the ball at Davy and immediately scampered for the house. "Me want take Bear!" she said to herself as she pushed past her father and ran for the stairs.

"Grab your coloring books too," Davy called after her. "We can play in the tree house." He trotted after his little sister.

Margaret handed Miss Parker her coffee mug and rose to follow the children to the stairs. "I'm going to at least bring a sweater with me today. I thought it would be warm this time of year."

"It gets cool in the evenings now," Jarod nodded, reaching for his own leather jacket. "C'mon, kids, let's get a move on."

"Betcha I can beat you to the car," Davy challenged his little sister after they both had made it back downstairs again. He threw open the front door.

"Not fair!" Ginger called out. "Oo bigger than me!"

"You, Sprite, not 'oo.' Say it right and I'll let you win," Davy pushed through the front screen and started down the steps at a healthy trot.

"Ee-oo," the little girl tried. "Y..y..ou."

Davy stopped and waited for her. "Now say it again. 'You're bigger than me.'"

"Ee-oor bigger than me." Ginger actually stopped moving so she could concentrate on her enunciation.

The boy grinned. "THAT'S better. C'mon. You can win this time."

Jarod stared out the door and then turned to smile at Miss Parker as she came from the kitchen with two full sacks of groceries. "Maybe we won't need to find a speech therapist after all," he chuckled as he took one of the sacks from her. "Let's see what Davy gets her to do first. Right now, I think she'd do just about anything he asked of her."

"They are cute together, aren't they?" Margaret smiled from the top of the stairs, her light sweater tossed casually over one arm. "She walked around the house like a lost puppy for a few days after Davy left — I think it even made her appreciate Sammy a bit more, although I don't think she ever really forgave him for hurting Bear."

"Davy's been living for the day his father and sister came home," Miss Parker followed the other adults out the door and pulled the front door closed behind her.

The drive to Sydney's was a thankfully short one, for Davy and Ginger were tossing their softball back and forth in the back seat over their grandmother's lap and giggling contagiously. Kevin answered the knock at the front door with a startled expression on his face. "I thought…"

"I figured I'd want to talk to him before everybody started to arrive," Jarod explained quickly. "How's he doing?"

"He's still asleep," Kevin stated with a glance at the two giggling kids.

"Why don't you two take your ball across the street to the park until it's time for lunch," Miss Parker directed them with a carefully extended forefinger that didn't endanger the grocery sack she was holding.

"Watch for traffic," Margaret called as the two joined hands and headed for the curb.

"I brought lunch fixings for us," Miss Parker told Kevin as the adults moved into the house and closed the front door. "Kevin, why don't you get out those documents that set Sydney off the first time? Jarod could probably read them and understand them."

"You took them…"

"No," she shook her head. "Remember, I put them in the bookcase, where they wouldn't get lost."

Kevin followed her finger and found the aging set of folders neatly inserted amongst the books on psychology and philosophy. Jarod followed him into the living room and sat down at an easy chair with light streaming in through the picture window. He opened the folder and began to read.

"Is Deb in the kitchen?" Miss Parker asked before moving deeper into the house.

Kevin shook his head. "She's shopping for dinner — she should be back soon."

"I bet we can have lunch made by the time she gets back," Margaret picked up the grocery sack that Jarod had deposited on the couch and followed the tall brunette.

Jarod read through the folder quickly, pausing only when he found the notes in English from Dr. Krieg to a Mr. Parker. Kevin had seated himself on the couch not far away and watched as Sydney's original protégé digested the information at an amazing rate. Finally, however, the chocolate eyes raised to look into his. "Do you know what all this means?"

"Miss Parker explained some of it to me," Kevin began lamely.

"Essentially, this means that the Centre stepped into Sydney's life very early on in the guise of the Nazis — first killing all of his family except his twin brother and then running horrible, obscene medical and psychological experiments on the two boys. Then, after the war, the man who took care of the twins was a Centre plant — someone under direct orders from Mr. Parker to mold and influence both Green brothers into studying psychology and then, latter, finding a job at the Centre themselves." Jarod closed the folder and put it on the table next to him. "I'd imagine that the plant that took care of the boys after the war portrayed himself as a long-lost family member — and the worst of it could be that he or she WAS related to them." He closed his eyes as the way his mentor would have reacted to this news processed. "He was stolen as a boy, just as I was and just as you were."

"But I don't remember being stolen," Kevin complained softly.

"Centre brainwashing techniques have gotten better over the years," Jarod speculated. "Even I know that Raines and his goons managed to erase certain memories from me when I was older — if they got to you as a very young boy…"

"But I still don't understand — why would knowing that he was stolen make him so…"

"Crazy?" Jarod supplied the word Kevin really didn't want to say. "Because he was led to believe that he made so many of those decisions himself — because finding out that he'd been lied to and manipulated even in his youth has made his actions as a man that much more repulsive to him now. And, most likely, because he'd managed to suppress most of the memories of Dachau in order to retain his sanity — and these pictures and notes have ripped all the barriers away." Jarod could see that Kevin didn't fully understand the implications yet. "It's like Deb's nightmares, only worse because he'd deliberately pushed everything so far back in his mind that he'd actually forgotten much of it."

"Did you know that Syd had a sister?" Miss Parker asked as she brought both men a tall glass of iced tea.

Jarod glanced up at her, startled. "A sister?"

"I know you said that what he told me was in confidence," she said, sitting down on the arm of Jarod's chair, "but maybe this has a bearing on what's happening with him now — as a matter of fact, I'm fairly sure of it."

"Why?" Kevin wasn't following her reasoning.

"Because he described her to me," she answered, "and from the description, she sounded like she looked very much like our Sprite."

"Ah!" Jarod steepled his fingers in front of his nose in a gesture so very much like that of his mentor. "That explains part of it then." He looked into one confused face and another that was nodding agreement. "Don't you remember," he asked Miss Parker, "how stunned he was at the airstrip?"

"I saw it," she told Kevin. "But I'd been almost expecting it since he talked to me about his sister — I was hoping that having Ginger around would help a bit…"

"It will — eventually," Jarod told her, "especially after she starts to warm up to him. But that will have to happen at its own pace — we can't push Ginger either."

"Kevin," a sleepy and accented voice drifted from the back of the house, "do you still have any coffee left?"

Miss Parker looked at Jarod and patted his arm. "I think that's your cue, Wonder-boy," she told him softly.

He rose and went into the kitchen to find where a mug of coffee had been left near the microwave. He heated the leftover coffee quickly and carried it into the den. "Hello, Sydney," he said, moving around the end of the couch and handing his former mentor the coffee.

"Jarod! I didn't think…" Sydney started, then folded his brows. "Did Kevin call you?"

"Why would Kevin have called me?" Jarod carefully answered the question with a question so that he wouldn't have to either lie or break his word to the young Pretender.

Sydney gazed into his former protégé's eyes and tried to discern subterfuge, but couldn't. "No reason," he finally conceded and sipped at the hot coffee. "I guess I was just startled to see you here before lunch."

"I wanted a chance to talk to you before everybody else got here and this place became a zoo," Jarod smiled at him and sat down on the coffee table. "Missy told me you've been having some difficulties…"

"Yes, well…" The older man found something interesting to watch on the surface of his coffee, "you don't need to…"

"Sydney," Jarod said softly, "I think it's time we had some serious discussions, don't you?" He gazed evenly as his mentor's chestnut eyes flicked up to his briefly. "We have a number of things we need to settle between us that we didn't get a chance to get to before all Hell broke looks around here. And considering what set you off not too long ago…"

Sydney found himself at war with the part of his mind that wanted to run away from all of this — that knew that what Jarod was asking was to deliberately walk INTO the pain of his immense guilt with the expectation that he would eventually walk out of it again. This time, he knew, Jarod would be wanting to pull information from him about THAT time — the time of horror and agony in Dachau — to make the connections that he himself was obviously already making in his own mind. And yet, he knew that he needed to do this — for Deb, for Melissa, and for Kevin, if not for himself.

"You're right," he surprised himself and Jarod by agreeing. "We touched on a few of the bigger, more egregious things while we were doing research to bring the Triumvirate to bear on Raines, but…"

"…But we didn't finish the job," Jarod finished for him. "We need to put it ALL to bed, Sydney, once and for all. You need closure, and so do I."

"I don't think there will be anything we can do, Jarod," Sydney sighed. "Some of the reading I've been doing for Missy has brought back… things…" He swallowed hard. "I find I have no excuse for the things that I did for the better part of my life. I knew what it meant to have such things done to me, because I had been where you were — and I did them anyway…"

Jarod shook his head. "You know things aren't that simple, Sydney. What you went through in Dachau was monstrous…"

"What I did… what I allowed… to happen to you was monstrous, Jarod," Sydney insisted bitterly.

"Some of it was," Jarod agreed in a very non-accusative tone. "But the question I want you to answer today is just how much of what happened to you in the camp did you remember and have in the back of your mind while you were working with me?"

Sydney closed his eyes. "Very little if anything at all. I forgot as much of it as I could as fast as I could. Uncle Fritz…" Just pronouncing the name was to invite bile into the back of his mouth. "Uncle Fritz helped both Jacob and me put much of that behind us…"

"You mean he brainwashed you," Jarod pronounced somberly. "I saw the notes, Sydney — the reassurance that the man who would take charge of you and Jacob at war's end would be a Parker loyalist like Krieg."

"It doesn't matter — it doesn't change the fact that…" Sydney accused himself again.

"It DOES matter, Sydney, and you know it!" Jarod exclaimed. "How can you be held accountable when you were brainwashed into not remembering — not understanding?"

"I still should have known the difference between right and wrong — and seen that what I was letting happen to you here was… beyond justification."

Jarod sat back a bit. "Just what is it that you did that you feel was so monstrous, Sydney?"

Sydney opened his eyes again and stared at his former protégé in shock. "Good God, Jarod, was there anything that I did that WASN'T monstrous?"

"You taught me right from wrong, how to tie a tie…" Jarod began listing.

"You know what I mean," Sydney growled at him.

"All right then, let's get down to it. How many of the SIMs we ran were your idea?" Jarod asked suddenly.

"None of them were — you know that," Sydney responded, stung.

"How many of the experiments you put me through were of your design?"

"They were ALL of my design," he protested, then backed down slightly, "although the orders to find a way to measure certain areas of your intellect came from the Tower."

"Did you ever protest, or try to refuse to do something?"

Sydney looked down. "Yes, and all it took was to be reminded of how important my work with you was to the Centre to get me to back down and go right back to work. I was a coward…"

"You are familiar with the Milgram Experiment, aren't you?"

Sydney's eyes opened wide. "Yes, I read Obedience to Authority when it initially came out. It was very disturbing reading."

"I'd imagine," Jarod nodded. "The idea that perfectly sane, rational and ethical people could be convinced to administer potentially dangerous electrical shocks to strangers while under the blanket of a perceived authority, even when it would otherwise conflict with their conscience must have been frightening to you. Especially as some of the parallels drawn in the book were to the actions of Nazi officers during the war — the trial of Eichmann for example…"

"What are you saying?" Sydney gaped.

"That you were in a similar situation, Sydney – that for a time, you were willing to submit to the authority of the Tower when it came to my training and use in running SIMs. When you finally began to question, you not only suffered devastating personal loss as a result but also were put under increasing pressure by the Tower to continue. You've read the study data, Sydney — what was the percentage of people capable of deliberately flying in the face of authority on the basis of principles and ethics?"

"I don't remember." Sydney was pale and shaken.

"Thirty percent on an average, Sydney," Jarod said kindly. "You also followed the norm in that when I escaped — the moment I rebelled — you began your own more subtle rebellion too. You began to help me, feed me clues about what the Centre was up to — you even made it possible for me to rescue my brother Jay." He looked at his mentor understandingly. "And now that you're removed from all of it, now that all the manufactured barriers to understanding and memory have been wiped away, you're mistaking a natural tendency to submit to a perceived form of authority to do another person — me — harm as a tendency having arisen from within yourself. You see it as a lack of strength or principles that makes you fully responsible for what you did." He put a gentle hand on Sydney's arm. "You don't need to do that, and you aren't being fair to yourself. Put the responsibility where it belongs — with Mr. Parker, Raines, the Triumvirate."

A solitary tear rolled down Sydney's ashen face as he struggled to understand what Jarod was telling him. "I could have done more, though," he complained stubbornly. "I should have…"

"There are some things you could have done — maybe," Jarod agree. "You could have let me know that you cared a helluva lot sooner than you did…" He stopped that line of thinking when another tear dropped to the pale cheek "But the important thing is that the bulk of what you're tearing yourself apart about right now IS NOT YOUR FAULT for the most part — not in the way you'd like to convince yourself, anyway."

Sydney put his face in his hands. "God," he choked back a sob.

Jarod shifted closer and caught one of those hands in his and held on tightly. "Listen to me. Yes, we have some small issues that need addressing — maybe a few things we need to discuss, forgive each other for and then put behind us. But you are not a monster, Sydney — you are not another Krieg and never were. Do you hear me?"

"I am so sorry, Jarod," the old man cried softly.

Jarod sighed and shifted from coffee table to the edge of the daybed and pulled the man who, despite everything, had raised him — and raised him well — into his arms. "I know you are, Sydney," Jarod said quietly. "You don't need to apologize to me anymore — I forgave you a long time ago, although I wasn't in a position to tell you until now. Let it go." The old man shook. "Let it go, Sydney. It's long past time."

Xing-Li hurried to her door at the sound of the knock. "You're early," she chided Tyler as she let him in. "I have a few things to do yet."

"You look fine," he reassured her as he followed her into her apartment and halted by the short couch while she continued on toward the back. "Better than I do, in fact." It was the first time he'd seen her in anything but a silk brocade cheongsam, and she did look fine in her more casual Western attire.

"I borrowed these from Crystal," she replied self-consciously, brushing her hands down the tee shirt and shorts that looked almost big on her but fit well enough that they merely highlighted her diminutive size.

"Speaking of whom," Tyler looked over his shoulder toward the door, "is she almost ready to go too?"

"You might want to go knock on her door," Xing-Li told him with a gesture toward the door. "I'll be ready in just a moment."

Tyler shook his head. "I'll collect you ladies one at a time, I think," he remarked with a grin. "Miss Parker gave us an approximate timeframe to work with, not a definite 'be here by' time."

"Are you sure that it will be OK with her that I come with you?" she asked him in a slightly worried tone. "I mean, maybe she's not expecting me…"

"Don't worry about it," he told her reassuringly. "I think she was expecting me to ask you to come along when she asked me to pick up Crystal at the same time, don't you?"

"What's the occasion?"

"Her fiancé's home with his little girl – this is a welcome-home event."

Xing-Li stuck her head out the bathroom door. "I didn't know she was getting married."

"Yeah," Tyler told her, "to her childhood sweetheart, I gather."

"There," she announced after pulling her head back into the bathroom and finishing her grooming. She stepped out and stood expectantly in front of him. "Am I presentable?"

"Absolutely," he replied, smiling back at her. He held out his arm to her. "Ready?"

She smiled shyly as she let him commandeer her hand and tuck it into his elbow securely. This would be the second time that her handsome American boss had asked her to accompany him somewhere – and she had yet to get used to him claiming possession of her hand in quite that fashion. She let him lead the way from the apartment so that she could lock up, and then followed him down the stairs to knock on Crystal's door.

The young girl answered, a look of hesitancy and uncertainty on her face. "Yes?"

"Are you ready to go?" Tyler asked kindly.

"I guess," she replied, slipping her apartment key into her jeans pocket, "although I'm still not sure why I'm going."

"From what I understand, Sydney wants you there," he pointed the way to his little sports car, "and that's enough for Miss Parker." He opened the door. "I'm thinking that you could get in the back, and let Xing-Li have the front."

"That's cool," Crystal said and folded herself so she could slip into the narrow back seat. "Thanks for the ride, Mr. Tyler."

"Not a problem, kid," Tyler said, scooting around the back of the car to the driver's seat. "Buckle up, you two…"

Ginger looked up from her coloring book and listened to the noises around her. Grandma, Deb and She were in the kitchen, starting to put things together for a big dinner that night. Daddy, Kevin and Davy had adjourned to the back yard to play a game of Frisbee, complete with laughter and shouting. Sometime that afternoon, Daddy had told her that there would be more new people coming over – and that fact had given her reason to cuddle up with Bear and her coloring books.

But now she was thirsty. She retrieved Bear from his chair next to her, rose and headed toward the kitchen – only to turn around when the front doorbell rang. Being the closest, she went to the door and opened it, and then squeaked in alarm. It was the Big Man – the one that had so frightened her at Daddy's house.

"Hi there, Princess," Sam was surprised to see Jarod's little girl so soon and immediately toned his voice down so as not to alarm the little girl anymore than she already was. It was obvious that she was no less frightened of him now than she had been in California. "Are your mom and dad here?"

Ginger nodded and skittered away from the door – leaving it open for Sam to come in – and headed back toward the kitchen and safety. When she got there, she discovered that Grandma had stepped outside to talk to Daddy, so she tugged on Her arm to get Her attention. "Man here," she said in a tiny voice and pointed.

Miss Parker looked up to see a chagrined Sam leading a confused Mei-Chiang into the room while Ginger caught her breath again and retreated to the very deepest room of the house, clutching Bear to her desperately. It took her a moment to realize that in running away from one stranger, she'd run straight into the lair of another – for Grandpa was stretched out on the couch with one leg resting on a machine that slowly bent it and straightened it. She'd never seen such a thing, not even on television.

Sydney's eyes opened at the sound of panting from a small chest, and he to see Ginger backed against a wall, staring at him with huge and frightened eyes. In the background, he could make out the sounds of Sam's voice – a sound that made Ginger's eyes flick toward the kitchen door in real fear before returning to study him and his ever-moving leg with trepidation.

"Are you frightened, ma petite?" he asked very softly so as not to spook the child. She slowly nodded. "Looking for a place to hide – to feel safe?" Again she nodded. "If you curl up in that chair over there," he pointed, "you can be safe here with me until your Daddy or Kevin comes back in."

Not letting her eyes leave him, Ginger slipped into the chair he'd indicated and folded herself into a small knot with Bear held tightly to her chest like a shield. "What dat thing doing?" she asked in a very small voice.

"The doctor told me that it would help make my knee better faster," Sydney answered honestly. "Tell me, what frightened you so?"

Ginger glanced at the kitchen door again. "Man comed – Big Man…"

"And big men scare you?"

She nodded somberly. "Big Man hurt me," she explained vaguely.

Sydney's brows rose on his forehead. "THIS Big Man has hurt you?" Sam would harm a small child? He didn't think so…

Ginger shook her head. "'Nuther Big Man, long time ago."

"Parker," he called out over the back of the couch toward the kitchen.

Miss Parker appeared in the kitchen doorway in very short order. "Hey, Syd, guess who's…"

Sydney held up a hand to interrupt her. "There's a very frightened little girl in here who could use her daddy right now."

Miss Parker looked in the direction that Sydney was pointing, and the vision of Ginger huddled in the big, leather easy chair with huge and darting eyes that touched her face with recognition and yet found no relief would remain with her for a long time. "I'll get him," she promised her new daughter gently and then vanished.

"Your daddy will be here soon, ma petite," Sydney soothed at the little girl as best he could. "You'll be safe now."

Ginger felt herself relax even as she heard her father's voice in the distance, greeting the Big Man and somebody else and then coming closer.

"Sprite?" Jarod finally called from the doorway.

"Daddy!" she whimpered and scampered down from the chair and over to where her father could swing her up into his arms and hold her tightly.

"What's the matter, fairy child?" the Pretender asked gently as his hands soothed down her back in calming strokes.

"Big Man comed," she explained again and buried her face in his neck.

"She's afraid of large men – she says that one hurt her a long time ago," Sydney filled in the gap as best he could for her.

Jarod sighed. "Do you remember the day that you met Uncle Jay and Uncle Nathan – how scared you were of them at first?" he asked his little girl. She nodded against his neck. "And do you remember how nice they were once you finally got to know them a little bit?" The nod that came that time was a little more hesitant. "Well, Sam is going to be the same way. He's Daddy's friend and a good friend of Mommy's and Grandpa's – and I know for a fact that he'd NEVER hurt you."

Ginger just whimpered and snuggled down tighter against her father. Jarod glanced at Parker and at Sydney in defeat. "What are we going to do?" he asked in frustration. "I don't want her terrified…"

"What's wrong?" Margaret had followed Jarod and Miss Parker into the den and caught sight of her granddaughter huddled in Jarod's arms. "Sprite?"

"It seems that Sam terrifies Ginger," Sydney explained again from the couch. "She told me that a big man like him hurt her a long time ago."

Margaret nodded. "She talked about that with me once in California, about how a big man kept touching her in the night and hurting her. I assumed at the time she was talking about the foster parent that molested her…"

Parker and Sydney both spouted in disgust and sympathy. "We need to give her a safe place to run to when she gets overwhelmed," Jarod said firmly.

"This house is going to be literally crawling with strangers when Tyler gets here with Crystal and Xing-Li," Parker told him, feeling the pressure of her little girl's fears but unable to relieve it.

"What about if we make the den off limits to anyone but immediate family?" Sydney suggested suddenly. He looked at the little girl who still didn't trust him. "I'll have Kevin take me off this gizmo for the rest of the day, Mrs. Russell can bring her coloring books and toys in here, and she can be back here safe when she's not with you, Jarod."

"No, Sydney. You need to be on the machine today," Miss Parker complained. "One day's vacation yesterday is one thing — two days in a row, your therapist will have a cow…"

"Sprite," Jarod tapped her on the shoulder and called her name several times until she finally lifted her head to look at him. "What if we bring your stuff in here — do you think you can stay back here with Grandpa Sydney if we ask Sam and all the others you don't know to stay out?"

"Big Man no come back here?" the little girl asked in a voice shaking with fear.

"No. And Grandpa will be on his machine, making sure that you stay safe. He can call me if there's a problem, just like last time. What do you think — would that be OK?"

Ginger tipped her head and looked down at her new grandfather. He'd made her safe and then called Daddy to help — maybe he wouldn't be so bad to stay with after all. He had kind eyes — a little like Daddy's. "Me 'tay Gampa, OK." She looked at her father. "Me 'tay tree house too, if Davy comed…"

"I'll talk to Davy," Margaret said, "although I think he was talking about going to the park to see if there was a softball game to be had this afternoon."

"I don't want you climbing into the tree house if Davy isn't with you," Jarod told her. "I don't want you to fall."

"OK," Ginger answered, disappointed. The tree house would have been ideal — it was far away from any of the scary new adults.

"Here, then, I'll give you to Grandpa…" Jarod started to lean over.

"She's still a little nervous around me, Jarod," Sydney stopped him with a word. "She doesn't have to…"

But it was too late. Ginger leaned out and put out her arms to go to the older man on the couch whose job it would be to keep her safe. Sydney found himself putting up his arms and gathering the little girl to him, feeling her settling into his side with her arms around his neck — almost hitting him in the face with her Bear. He shifted slightly on the couch so that she'd have more room, surprised that she wasn't struggling to get free from the embrace that he deliberately made loose and non-confining. "Are you going to be OK there, ma petite?" he asked softly.

"Me OK," she replied softly and put her head on his shoulder, still watching her father for reassurance and support.

"I'll go get her backpack and other supplies," Margaret said, making tracks for the dining room. Parker began moving file folders from the coffee table to a spot on top of a bookcase.

The doorbell rang again, and Jarod looked up. "I'll bet that's Tyler and the others. I get it." He shot his daughter a final look. "You gonna be OK now?"

Ginger nodded against her grandfather's shoulder and felt his gentle hand smooth down her back. "I'll call out again if there are any more problems," Sydney promised him.

Parker returned to the side of the couch and straightened her new daughter's braids and gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead. "I'll be just in the kitchen, Sprite," she told her, "in case you need me."

"'Kay."

Sydney could see the disappointment in his foster-daughter's eyes that the little girl still hadn't accepted her entirely, and knew that he was no more accepted yet than she was despite the fact that the girl was nestling against him. Once they were along again, he loosened his hold even more so that as Margaret came through the doorway with the pink backpack, Ginger would be free to claim it. "Go on, cheri," he urged the child kindly, feeling the tension in her body as her backpack came into view. "Get your things. You can color here at the coffee table next to me and still be safe."

Ginger shot him a look of pure gratitude and carefully scrambled over him so she could get the backpack from her grandmother.

"Is there anything I can get for you, Sydney," Margaret asked, feeling some sympathy for the man trapped on the couch by the need for the therapy machine on his leg.

"No, thank you, Mrs. Russell. I think I'll be fine."

"Call me Maggie," Margaret responded. "We're going to be family — there's no need for all this formality."

Despite himself, Sydney found himself smiling up at her. "Thanks, Maggie," he tried out the name carefully, "but I'll be just fine."

Margaret hesitated, not knowing how to tell the man on the couch that she'd heard some of the discussion between him and her son and now wished she could help relieve him of some of the crippling guilt she now knew he carried inside him. She had come to Delaware to see him squirm in guilt, despite what she'd told the others — only she'd thought that she'd have to help instill it herself. That was no longer the case, for the guilt he already carried was far greater and far more corrosive than anything she could have wished for him. And she had seen enough to know that ultimately he was a decent and loving man — one who had been pushed far past anything a decent man should have been.

"What?" Sydney asked as he noticed her hesitation. Jarod's mother had an odd expression on her face. "Is something wrong?"

"I think I owe you an apology," she said lamely, studying her hands.

He cast a quick look at Ginger and found her absorbed in her coloring again, apparently at ease with her beloved grandmother still in the room with her. Assured that she was busy, he looked up again. "Whatever for?"

"You know why I'm here?"

He nodded slowly. "I have a good idea. I can't say that I blame you — if I were in your position…"

"From what Jarod says, you already have been… In my position, that is," she added as his brows folded in slight confusion.

"Ah!" His face cleared as understanding dawned, then folded in confusion again. "That still doesn't explain what it is that you feel the need to apologize for."

"You have to understand, I've hated you for so long…"

"That's the one thing I do understand, Maggie," Sydney replied quickly. "You don't have to explain that part of it."

"But I hated someone that doesn't exist," she continued. "I thought you were a cold and calculating person who used and abused my son without a qualm or twinge of conscience. I…" She blushed slightly. "I know it is neither polite nor wise, but I found myself listening to some of your talk with Jarod a while ago…" She watched Sydney's face fall and his gaze shift away from hers. "I think I have all the answers I wanted now, and I owe you an apology for thinking so badly of you."

"How can you do that?" Sydney asked her as he shook his head disbelievingly.

"Do what?"

"Forgive so easily? I never have gotten over the jealousy I feel when I think of another man raising my son in my place — how do you…"

Margaret shook her head. "I didn't say that I'm not still jealous of the time you spent with him. I don't think I'll ever be able to put that entirely behind me. You shared my son's childhood — that's something I'll never be able to have back."

Sydney nodded. "We're not so different in that, then."

"Did you ever get a chance to talk to this man who raised your son?"

He nodded again. "Briefly, just before he died."

"Then I'm luckier than you," she told him kindly, "because forgiveness comes easier when you know who you're dealing with." Her brilliant blue eyes looked down into his chestnut. "I will never stop being jealous of you, Sydney, but I can't hate you anymore. You did a good job raising my son, despite everything — you helped him become a man I could be proud of. I'm glad that if…" Her voice caught. "…If Jarod was going to be raised by someone at the Centre, that someone turned out to be you."

"I am sorry that I didn't do more for him," Sydney confessed to her softly.

"You did what you could under the circumstances," she soothed. "Don't blame yourself for things you couldn't change."

"You sound just like Jarod," Sydney stated sadly.

"I'm his mother — DUH, as the kids say," she smiled back. "But he's right, you know. If he can forgive you, then the time has come to forgive yourself too."

"Thank you, Maggie," he said softly, lifting a hand to take hers gently. "I was wrong — there WAS something you could do for me, and you just did it."

She squeezed his hand briefly and then let go so that she could join the others. Ginger looked up as her grandmother left and then looked over at her grandfather. "Gampa OK? Not sad now?"

"I'm fine, ma petite." Sydney cast a long look after where Jarod's mother had vanished. A lot had gone unsaid during that short and deep conversation that he'd have to think about for a very long time. Then returned his attention to the little girl at the coffee table, realizing that now would not be the time for that. "Now," he said, rolling toward her as much as the therapy machine would allow, "why don't you show me what you're coloring? You've been working so hard…"

Feedback, please:


	26. Calm Before The Storm

Resolutions – 26

Calm Before the Storm

by MMB

Lawler watched the face of Carroll Hitchens, executive editor, as he read through the proposed first part in his investigative report on the Centre and its Pretender Project. After thoroughly digesting the information in the second packet, Lawler had spent the better part of the previous night typing and amending his preliminary column. His goal had been to make it provocative enough that it would both catch a reader's eye and appeal to the latent journalist that lay buried beneath bureaucracy and job security concerns inside every newspaper editor. Now he'd get to see just how good a job he'd done by trying it out on his editor.

The audacity and scope of what Lawler was suggesting the Centre had been up to for years had riveted Hitchens almost immediately. It was a story out of the Twilight Zone or TV science fiction, this idea that a powerful organization felt itself capable of kidnapping small children with impunity and then keeping them in isolation and virtual slavery indefinitely. And to think the current darling of the press, an absolutely stunningly beautiful CEO by the name of Miss Parker, not only knew about this but also had participated in such a thing was almost beyond understanding.

"You have proof of all this?" Hitchens whispered as if almost afraid of the answer.

"Circumstantial evidence," Lawler replied. "I have copies of internal memos and progress reports," Lawler answered, "Copies of missing persons reports and status reports from the agencies involved."

"Damn!"

"Yeah, that's what I said," Lawler breathed a sigh of relief. At least Hitchens hadn't rejected it out of hand.

"Any direct interviews?"

"Not yet," Lawler shook his head. "I wanted to run this past you first before I started asking for mileage and expenses to try to get interviews with any of the principles — IF I can find them or get them to talk to me, that is."

"Where the Hell did you get this?" Hitchens asked suddenly, frowning. "When last you and I spoke, you were wanting to dig deeper into this military conspiracy story from the Pentagon…"

"I had an informant literally dump part of it in my lap," Lawler told him honestly. "A package was delivered to my desk here at the Post. A second package came a couple of days later with the copies of the memos and reports. A person called me after each delivery…"

"'A person?' Nothing more definitive than that?" Hitchens was amazed — Lawler wasn't known for buying into crackpot stories from just anybody. "Was it a man or a woman?"

"It was a whisper," Lawler answered in frustration, "but I think it was a man. New England accent."

Hitchens put the pages of the preliminary article back in order and closed the file folder over them. "You realize that until I see something a whole lot more verifiable, I'm not going to allow this out in print?"

"What do you want to see?" Lawler sat back. Now came the dealing.

"I want copies of everything you have from this Whisper Man of yours, and I'll want copies of everything and anything else you get from this point onward."

Lawler shook his head, although he like the alias Hitchens had provided for his informant. He'd have to remember it. "If I have a source speaking to me anonymously, I'm not going to give you his or her name, you know…"

"I know that," Hitchens answered tiredly. "I know the drill. I don't want the names — but I want everything else that I might need to defend the integrity of the paper in a court of law. What you're doing here, if you don't dot your I's and cross your T's very carefully, is libel and slander — both against a person the public is particularly fond of right now and a powerful research firm with the money to hire very cut-throat lawyers to defend itself."

"I have enough to at least write an opening article that puts the questions out there, Carroll," Lawler countered. "I can hint at the skeleton of the information I've managed to gather so far and then openly ask the Centre to explain itself. With any luck, I can generate a little buzz and get the public asking the questions too. With the buzz started, a little pressure will be all I need to smoke out a malcontent or two who'll be more than happy to roll over on them. By then, I should have spoken to at least one or two of the principals involved — and will have dug up more dirt."

"Get to it, then," Hitchens pointed back out into the large room outside his glassed-in office. "Give me something vague yet enticing that I CAN print before end of evening run, and I'll put you in the morning edition. We'll hang onto this one as a more informative opener for when you have a LOT more rock-solid information and sources. But be careful, Dave. Get the questions out there, but don't make any accusations you can't already back up with something absolutely unimpeachable."

Lawler stood and stretched with a happy smile on his face. "You won't be sorry, Chief," he smirked and pulled open the door and headed back in the direction of his desk.

Pulitzer Prize, here I come, he thought to himself triumphantly.

Sydney stood in the doorway to the den and gave a contented sigh. The welcome home get-together for Jarod had gone remarkably well so far. Tyler, Sam and Jarod had been given the responsibility for the barbeque and had spent a good part of the afternoon sitting outdoors on Sydney's patio talking shop and getting to know each other better. Sydney suspected that Tyler hadn't really had much chance to meet his boss' fiancé before Jarod had headed for California. In that case, it was a logical deduction that his getting a chance to talk to the man who would be taking charge of an important research department as well as helping Miss Parker make major decisions regarding Centre policy would be something he'd wanted to do for a while. For his part, he expected that Jarod would be very impressed with the character and intelligence of the man Missy had chosen for her immediate assistant, seeing the possibilities of very successful and cooperative business dealings with the man for years to come.

Other guests had been similarly made at home. Margaret had been utterly charmed by Mei-Chiang and Xing-Li, and they with her. They, along with Miss Parker, had descended upon the kitchen and chattered and yakked their way through helping with the preparations of everything but the meat for the meal to come. The discussions that had accompanied the work had ranged over many topics – with Margaret talking about her family in California and Miss Parker remembering cookouts while her mother had been alive.

Kevin and Deb, knowing that there were more than enough people to give Sydney or Miss Parker any help they needed for the time being, took a much-needed walk together in the park. They had had very little chance in the last day or so to spend quality time without any threat of interruption, and Sydney had just waved them off when they told him where they were intending to go, reminding them of when the planned dinner hour would be so that they could be home in time to eat.

When the softball game that Davy had been hoping for didn't happen, he was easily convinced to take his little sister up into the tree house to play. Ginger had dutifully packed up her coloring supplies and Bear after shyly thanking Sydney for letting her stay in the den. Now relieved of babysitting duties, Sydney hadn't waited for Kevin to come back from the park before he'd gleefully freed himself from his 'damned gizmo.' He then went in search of the one person he knew was in his house that he hadn't had a chance to see yet and whom he wanted very much to give personal attention.

He found Crystal sitting politely at the kitchen table listening to the other women chattering avidly, too shy to do much more than nod when certain comments were aimed at the group in general rather than respond. She had stood and quietly come over to him when he'd appeared in the doorway to the den. "I was hoping I'd see you again," she said softly so as not to interrupt the flow of the others' conversation. "I wanted to thank you for extending the invitation to come today."

"I'm glad you accepted it," he told her with a smile, extending the arm not encumbered with the crutch in her direction. His smile grew just a little wider when she slipped under that extended arm and gave him a gentle hug. "I thought you'd enjoy not being alone for a change."

"I do," she assured him, warmed by the embrace and the consideration, "but I feel like I'm intruding on a family celebration."

"This IS a family celebration, Crystal," Sydney explained, pulling her along through the kitchen doorway and into the dining room where they could talk together with more privacy, "but you're not intruding at all. I think you'll find that the family that's gathered here today is a very unusual one, related more by ties of close friendship and shared experiences than by blood. Under those terms, you belong here as much as anybody else."

"You're serious!" she exclaimed in surprise.

"Is that so surprising?" he asked, leading her toward the dining table.

"I told you, I've been alone for a long time," she replied, having to work hard to keep from choking up. "Even with my own family, I was alone for the most part – mostly because I wished I didn't belong. I had a dad who beat up on me whenever he got tired of beating on my mom, and a mom who was too scared of what he was going to do to HER to worry much about what he might be doing to me."

"Was it always like that?"

She sat down heavily and dropped her head guiltily. "No, it just got that way gradually – and then got really bad about the time I started high school. I've never seen anybody who could backhand a person faster…" She sighed, then looked up at her fellow victim and now host and gestured around her. "I see this… camaraderie… and I wonder what it was that was wrong with me…"

"The fault wasn't yours, Crystal," Sydney soothed gently, easing himself into a nearby chair. "The fault lies with your abusive father."

Her eyes were shining with unshed tears. "I've always wondered what it would be like to be a part of a family that actually liked each other," she sighed. "Where there wasn't someone in the family that the rest were scared to death of." She gave him a very guilty look. "I think that's part of the reason that I gave Kevin such a bad time when he was trying to describe you to me and your relationship. I was so jealous of what he had…"

"You don't have to be jealous anymore," he said, reaching out for a hand. "I want you to consider yourself a member of my family. You're welcome here anytime."

"All of this because…"

"Because you deserve to have somebody give you a decent break at least once in your life," Sydney finished for her. "What you do with this break is, of course, your business – but…"

"Kevin's not going to like your including me in," she warned him. "I'm afraid I was rather nasty to him while I was on the streets."

"He'll get over it," Sydney smirked at her. "Besides, it was good for him to hear someone who was not a part of this world react less than enthusiastically to his life now. Kevin's not been… he was raised in a very sheltered environment all his life – it's taking him a while to acclimate to life here on the 'outside.'"

The look that Crystal gave him told him that he was probably going to have to tell her the rest of the story sooner or later – but not today. Today he was determined to enjoy himself. "And finally," he told her firmly, "it's my house, after all. I'm the person who will decide who is welcome here or not."

"Even if she's a street kid with a big mouth?"

"Absolutely," he told her without a moment's hesitation. "Besides, you seem to have behaved fine today as far as I can tell — and I'm sure I would have heard from Parker at least if you'd been sassing back to anybody." He watched with some concern as she blushed and then looked down at her hands. "If I'd thought that you'd cause trouble, I would have waited and spent more time with you with just us talking, rather than ask you to join in a family celebration. I suspected – and I was right – that given half a chance, you'd be an interesting person to get to know."

"I still don't understand why you're being so nice to me," she asked suddenly, looking up into his eyes with a sudden resurgence of distrust and defensiveness. "Honestly, I didn't do all that much…"

"On the contrary, you did enough to tell me, even though I was in lousy shape to see much, that your smart-ass, street-wise urchin act was just that — an act — and that you were a caring individual behind all those protective shields." His voice was soft, soothing, and she looked down again. "I do have one question for you, though."

"What's that?"

"After all that you'd been through at home, why on earth did you end up with that young man?" Crystal paled and almost visibly flinched, and Sydney put out a hand and claimed one of hers from her lap. "Sam told me some of what you told him — but I'd rather hear from you instead."

"If Sam told you what I told him, then you know it all," she replied defensively, although she clung to the hand that had claimed hers. "He picked me up off the streets where those others had dumped me and, for the most part, saw to it that I was safe from everyone else."

"Except him," he pressed gently. "He used you just as badly, I take it."

Crystal looked up at Sydney sharply. "That part of it happened mostly after Cricket got hurt," she told him with a shrug. "It was the price I paid for him keeping me safe. But before then, Cricket was his girlfriend — and she'd get really mad if he even looked in my direction. Otherwise, he'd only knock me around himself when I made a mistake that could cost us a flop or give us away to the cops." She looked back down again. "He never really hit me hard until I stood up for you that night."

"Why DID you stand up for me?" Sydney shot at her point-blank. "I mean, you'd probably seen him roll other drunks before, right?"

"Yeah," she admitted reluctantly.

"What was different that time?"

"He was being deliberately cruel," she replied finally, very softly. "He kept hitting and kicking you even after he found out you had no money, when it no longer served a useful purpose. Blue Cove is a small town — people here are more tightly knit and know each other better. I was afraid that if he kept on, he'd REALLY hurt you, and then we'd have the cops after us for sure. I stood up to him for the same reason he used to knock me around — because he was making a big mistake." She glanced up at him very guiltily. "So, to be honest, I was saving my own ass. I told you I didn't do much."

"And I told you that you did enough," he responded, squeezing her hand. "At least we're both safe from him now."

That earned him a look of raw gratitude. "Yeah, we are."

"And you have a place of your own that isn't some filthy mattress in a warehouse, and you're not eating out of restaurant garbage cans anymore."

"I just keep waiting to wake up in the warehouse."

"Uh-uhn. Not for as long as I have any say in the matter," he stated firmly. "I'd have brought you in here if I had more room. As it is, then, I'm having to content myself with including you in informal gatherings like this one today."

"I hope you didn't expect me to know all these people," she sighed, finding his attentiveness and concern for her still something that would take time to get used to and wanting to change the subject of discussion from herself to something far safer. "I mean, I only know you and Miss Parker and Sam and Mei and Kevin – I've met Kevin's girl the day I came for help…"

"Ah. That's Deb," Sydney smiled indulgently, and Crystal saw real affection in his expression for the other girl. "In real terms, she's the daughter of a very close friend of mine – but she's been like a granddaughter to me for years now."

"What about Kevin, is he really your nephew then?"

Sydney's chestnut eyes began to sparkle. "No, not really. Like you, he's alone in the world. I just… more or less adopted him… a while back."

Crystal's face began to slip into real confusion. "I thought you said that this was what you called a family celebration…"

"I also told you that this family wasn't necessarily related by blood," he reminded her, "and that you belonged as much as any of the others."

"I thought you were just trying to make me feel more at home," she admitted in chagrin.

"How about if I tell you all about the real relationships as well as the informal positions within this rather unusual family structure of ours?" he asked with a grin.

She nodded, eyes wide. "That might help. I don't want to step on any toes."

"Ah-HAH!" Sydney's eyes twinkled with mischief. "If you really were that smart-assed, street-smart brat, you wouldn't care if you stepped on toes at all. See? You just proved again that my assessment of you was right…"

"Sydney!" She looked at him with mild frustration at the pointed dig.

He smiled at her again reassuringly. "Just reinforcing the view that you do deserve your present condition, my dear. You seem so determined to convince yourself otherwise." She looked down again with a slight blush of embarrassment and residual discomfort at the constant flow of reassurance and confidence from him. Sydney decided to let her off the hook. "I tell you what — why don't you see if you can talk Parker out of a couple glasses of lemonade from the fridge, and I'll give you the low-down on everyone here. As much as I know, anyway, because some of these people even I don't know well..."

Crystal smiled at him, feeling him taking the pressure off. "OK." She rose and walked back toward the kitchen with what looked like a little more ease and confidence.

Sydney smiled to himself as he shook his head at the thought of trying to explain this family unit. Everything had begun when three co-workers who had nobody else but each other had begun to cling together for mutual support and affection. Over time, two others with no other real outside attachments had been added, and then the family had become very tight-knit. Now, it seemed, the family was adopting more strays with no other attachments to speak of every little while — Kevin, Mei-Chiang, Tyler, Xing-Li, and now a very self-conscious and intriguing young lady named Crystal.

Still, from the happy hum of voices around him, Sydney couldn't see how that was such a bad thing. After a lifetime with no family to speak of, to have a house as full as his was today was beyond priceless.

George Canfield had to struggle not to look guilty as he walked past the security guard to the Senate office building and headed for the elevator that would take him up to his third floor office. It had taken him this long to work up the courage to come in to the office to take care of the answering machine message that had resulted in his contact by the FBI and their enlistment of him in their efforts to gather damning evidence on his co-conspirators.

Luckily, the building seemed to be deserted. Canfield fumbled his keys as he unlocked the outer door, and then sighed and leaned back against the closed door behind him once he was inside. Running his fingers through his longish brown hair, he took three long and shaky breaths. He HAD to get a hold of himself, he told himself sternly, or he would give himself away when he met with Burns and Jackson tomorrow! He couldn't remember a time when he'd been more nervous and apprehensive about something — not even the pins and needles of an election night after a close race between himself and the incumbent Senator could come close to the real dread he was feeling right now.

Finally he forced himself to straighten and walk across the dimly lit outer office to his secretary's desk, and he plunked himself unceremoniously in her padded chair and reached for the answering machine button. The bright red digital display said that he — or his office — had four messages waiting. He pushed the play button and sank his chin into the palm of his hand while he listened through a lobbyist's spiel in regards to a bill that was currently in one of his committees, an invitation to speak at a Rotary Club meeting on his next trip back to his home state and a reminder from his party's whip to attend session on Monday to vote on an important piece of legislation. Then, when he heard the sound of his own voice start up, he roused himself and hit the delete button just as his tone of voice began to sound like begging — grateful that messages on THIS machine were stored digitally and could be deleted individually. Now all the incriminating evidence of his one-sided pleading with the FBI was gone — along with all the evidence of his own inner turmoil.

Feeling just a little more in control of the situation, Canfield rose and reached for the knob of the inner office door, pushing the door open and then walking slowly into his personal domain as a United States Senator. He looked around the office, noting as if for the first time the sturdy and simple elegance of the chairs and couch, as well as the ample working space of his desk. He sighed — he'd worked very long and very hard to win the right to occupy an office in this building in this town, only to squander it by his actions once he'd arrived.

How could he have ever possibly seen anything beneficial in sponsoring the development of chemicals and biological weapons that were considered taboo by the rest of the international community? Since when had he started buying into the concept that the ends justified the means? Had he just been bedazzled by the very idea of having a seat at the secret pinnacle of power — or were his personal ethics only useful when they served a personal agenda?

He moved to the window and peered down the street. In the distance, he could see the spire of the Washington Memorial piercing the sunset-painted sky like an alabaster needle. For the first time in a long time, he juxtaposed what he knew about the projects that the Centre had decided to shut down with what he knew about international law and simple common sense. How could he have ever possibly thought that violating so many federal and international laws could be in the common good? He didn't deserve the honor his constituents had given him, for he'd betrayed their trust.

Slowly he retreated from the window to sit down at his desk and stare at his hands on the blotter in front of him. They were hands that knew the honest labor of driving tractor and mending fences. Now they were manicured, white, hands that had seen little other than a computer keyboard or a fountain pen for months if not years. Canfield folded his hands and dropped them into his lap. He had to survive tomorrow — he had to let Agent Gillespie put whatever bit of micro-technology he wanted into a hidden corner of his suit and then attend the motorized meeting as if nothing had happened. He had to help Gillespie and Berghoff get the proof they needed.

After that…

He eyed the bottom right drawer of his desk without pulling it open. He knew what was inside. If tomorrow went as he hoped, and he heard from the FBI men that they had all they needed, then he'd be back here, in this office, after hours tomorrow.

And honor would be served at last.

Miss Parker shot an assessing look at Sydney from the front hallway and then bumped Jarod with her hip as he stood next to her and motioned with her nose for him to take a look as well. Jarod needed only a glance to see what she'd seen: Sydney's face was getting pale, even though the expression on his face was still congenial and interested and involved in the conversation going on around him. Neither of them was surprised, however. He had taken charge of Crystal the moment he'd gotten loose from his therapy machine and made it a point to be her companion all through dinner — and now sat with her and Margaret in the living room, the three of them chatting quietly.

Miss Parker's grey eyes caught Sam's, and a twitch of the nose directed his attention to the same place. The tall sweeper nodded slightly and then moved into the dining room to drop a possessive hand to his fiancée's shoulders as she and Xing-Li chattered happily with Deb at the dining table. Mei-Chiang looked up into her fiancé's face and smiled happily and expectantly as he bent to her ear.

The next person whose attention Miss Parker wanted to catch was Kevin's, but he wasn't in the room. She followed the sound of her son's favorite video game, but found Davy contentedly playing by himself while Ginger had curled up on her grandfather's couch and was now fast asleep with Bear clasped to her tightly. "Where's Kevin?" Miss Parker asked him quietly so as not to rouse her new daughter. "Do you know?"

"Talking with Mr. Tyler, the last time I saw him," Davy answered without taking his eyes from what he was doing.

"Where'd they go?"

"Out back, I think…"

Miss Parker backed into the kitchen again and gazed through the clear arcadia doorway into the nighttime back yard. Sure enough, Tyler and Kevin were outside in a pool of light from the kitchen, sitting facing each other and deep in very serious conversation. Deciding to listen before just barging in, Miss Parker walked to the kitchen table and paused.

"…so sorry," Kevin was saying. "I wanted to call you and talk to you, but it just seemed like things never cleared."

"Don't worry about it," Tyler said kindly. "I have to admit that I'm not all that surprised. I mean, you're HERE all the time — where Deb is — and I'm not."

"Yeah, but I did promise." Kevin sounded upset.

"I think the idea that you've got the guilts over this tells me that you gave it a good try under very difficult conditions," Tyler returned. "And, to be honest, I would have been very surprised if you'd managed to keep that promise, considering everything that's happened since then."

"You're not upset then?"

Tyler shook his head. "No, not really. You see, I've met someone else, and I think that I'm going to see if I can make a go of it with her instead."

"You mean Xing-Li?" Miss Parker smiled gently at the relief in Kevin's voice.

"Yup." Tyler let his Texas drawl stretch out. "So y'all don't need fret none, Kevin. Deb's a fine woman — I can see how much she cares about you. You're one lucky stiff."

"Stiff?" Miss Parker had to stifle the chuckle that welled up inside at the way that Kevin could sound so much like Jarod at times. She decided that the two had probably had the most important part of their discussion already, and that it was safe to interrupt them.

"Kevin? Where are Syd's pain pills? He's starting to look a little worn around the edges…" she asked as if just coming up to the arcadia doors.

Kevin looked up and into the darkened kitchen and then rose. "I have them in the back bathroom," he told her. "But do you honestly think he'll take one with all these people here?"

"What's wrong?" Tyler rose immediately at the sound of his hostess' voice.

"Oh, Sydney took an extra half day's vacation from his therapy machine," she explained as both young men came past her and back into the kitchen. "Now he's going to pay for it in stiffness and ache until morning, when he can get on the thing again."

"And the pain pills tend to put him out for the evening when he takes one," Kevin added, "which is why I seriously doubt that he'll be willing to take one until things quiet down."

Tyler looked at his wristwatch and found that it was already after eight. "I suppose I'd better be getting Xing-Li and Crystal home so that they'll be fresh for work in the morning. IF I can pry Crystal away from Sydney, that is. I think he's her security blanket, because she's stuck to his side like a saddle burr all afternoon."

Miss Parker nodded. "I wouldn't be surprised."

"I would be," Kevin commented. "I'm having problems getting used to her acting like a normal person — or even a bit shy. She sure didn't have any problems standing up to anybody before she and Sydney connected."

"I've seen it happen this way before," Tyler told him, "that lots of times teenagers will put on a prickly and unpleasant façade in order to hide the fact that they're desperately lonely or unhappy or something. It keeps them from being seen as vulnerable. Sydney saw through that, I think."

"I know he would have seen through it very easily," Miss Parker nodded. "He saw through me a long time ago — and there's no reason to assume that he isn't still as astute." She put her hand on the young Pretender's shoulder. "I think you'll have to get used to having Crystal around a bit more now, Kevin. Sydney's taken a liking to her."

"Wonderful." The sandy-haired young man sounded anything but thrilled by the prospect.

While Kevin headed for the back of the house and Sydney's bottle of pain medication, Tyler joined Sam and Jarod and Mei-Chiang and Xing-Li in order to quietly suggest to one of his passengers that perhaps they should be thinking about heading home. Miss Parker walked back toward the living room and quietly joined Sydney and Crystal. "Where'd Maggie go?" she asked the older man, looking around in vain for her.

"She went to check on Sprite," Sydney answered. "Nobody's seen her for a while."

"Sprite's fast asleep on your daybed," Miss Parker replied with a smile. "I think all the new people wore her out." She tipped her head and put a gentle hand on Sydney's shoulder. "And I think you've just about reached the end of your rope too, Syd. You've gone about four shades paler than normal. Your knee?"

"I'm fine…" he shook his head, dismissing the concern.

"She's right," Crystal told him frankly. "You look like you need to call it a day, and the rest of us need to let you get some rest."

"This has been such an interesting day, I hate to be the reason it has to end," Sydney grumbled, looking more at Miss Parker than Crystal.

"We'll have plenty of opportunities to do this again, Syd," Miss Parker reassured him, "not the least of which will be Sam and Mei's wedding in a couple of weeks. For now, though, let's not push your limits a lot further."

"Sydney, I think Mei and I are going to call it an evening," Sam announced from the doorway, then held up a restraining hand. "Don't get up, though. Thanks for a wonderful day."

"Oh yes!" Mei-Chiang stepped forward, her face glowing. "Thank you for inviting us into your house for the day."

"You're very welcome," Sydney smiled at Sam's pretty bride to be. "I hope we'll be seeing a lot more of you from now on."

Mei-Chiang blushed. "I'd like that."

"I think I'm going to be taking off myself," Tyler announced from behind Sam. "I have two pretty ladies to get back home so they can be all ready for a new day at work tomorrow."

"Thank you so much for having us," Xing-Li moved a step past Tyler so that she could see her host. "It was a great pleasure to meet you."

"That's my ride," Crystal told Sydney as she rose. "I'd better be going now. You need your rest."

Sydney caught at the girl's hand, and reached into his breast pocket for a piece of paper. "This is my home number here and my cell. Call anytime."

"Thank you," Crystal took the paper and pushed it carefully into one of her jeans pockets. Impulsively, she leaned over her host and gave him a tight hug. "For everything," she added in a soft voice meant only for his ear.

"Good night," Sydney smiled at her after releasing her from an answering hug. "Don't be a stranger."

Crystal saw Kevin come out of the back of the house and moved through the others so that she could talk to him more or less privately. "It was good to see you again," she said quietly. "I wonder if I could have a word with you — privately — before I go?"

Kevin's face folded into a slight frown, but he nodded and handed the pain pill over to Deb and let Crystal lead the way out the front door. "What's this about?" he demanded once there was a door giving them privacy.

"Look, I know that you're not very happy with my being here," Crystal began carefully, "and I can't really blame you for how you feel. I was being a real brat before. I just wanted to say that I'm sorry that I hurt your feelings. Maybe someday you'll forgive me enough that we can try to be friends again."

Kevin blinked. "You know, this isn't the you I've come to know," he told her skeptically. "Until today, I haven't heard you say one nice or kind word about anybody else."

"Yeah, Kevin, this is me, the real me," she nodded. "The person you knew before — that was the lie."

"I don't know…" he shook his head, still disbelieving. "If it was a lie, it was a damned convincing one."

"Believe what you want," she responded finally, a hint of sad frustration in her voice. "But I am sorry. And because he's asked me, I'll probably be over to see Sydney every once in a while. So if we can't be friends, at least can we not be enemies, OK? I don't want to fight or argue with you anymore."

Kevin thought for a bit, then nodded. "OK – because Sydney would want it that way," he explained dryly.

"Fair enough." Crystal pushed past Kevin and opened the front door. "Bye, everyone," she called into the house as she caught Tyler's eye and indicated her readiness to leave.

Sam and Mei-Chiang followed Tyler and his passengers in calling out their own farewells and finally climbing into their respective cars. Jarod and Miss Parker stood in the open doorway behind Kevin, waving until Sam's car had pulled away from the curb. Miss Parker went in search of Deb once the door was once more closed behind them. "C'mon, let's get that kitchen cleaned up again."

"I gave him that pill," Deb told Jarod as she prepared to follow Miss Parker into the kitchen. "If it works like last time, you'll need to think about moving Ginger out of the way…"

"Already done." Margaret's voice sounded from the kitchen, through which she was carrying a little girl who had hardly roused when her grandmother had picked her up. "I thought I'd take her into the living room and put her down on the couch there." She carried the child in and deposited her on the opposite end of the couch on which Sydney was still sitting.

"Here," he offered, pulling the crocheted afghan from the back of the couch down and unfolding it before handing it to Margaret to tuck around her little granddaughter's shoulders. "It looks like she's down for the count," he commented quietly.

"And the couch in the den is all yours again," Margaret answered. "Do you need a hand getting off this thing? It looks like a man-eater…"

"No, no, I'm fine," Sydney protested, reaching for the crutch that he'd placed within easy reach and scooting to the edge of the cushion. "It just takes me a few tries…"

The second time he tried to get himself erect, Margaret reached down and grabbed an elbow and gave him just the extra bit of help he needed to succeed. "Why is it that men are so damned stubborn when they need a hand," she grumbled to herself, her mind on a memory of Charles in much the same state after his first heart attack a year earlier.

"Because we don't like being out of control," Sydney answered her quite honestly, earning for himself a blink of surprise in response. He put the crutch under his armpit and leaned heavily on it. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she smiled back. Despite everything, she was growing to genuinely like this cultured gentleman who seemed to be the patriarch around which a very eclectic and flexible family unit had formed. "Are you going to be able to make it back there OK?"

"I'll be fine, Maggie," he assured her. "I'm not entirely without mobility." He nodded in her direction and began to slowly make his way toward the back of the house. Maggie Russell was still very much an enigma to him, a very uncomfortable one – for she reminded him that he'd been part of the system that had stolen her child, and her son's childhood. How, in the face of all of that, could she still treat him with equanimity?

Carroll Hitchens read through the copy of the introductory article that Lawler had sent to his terminal, his nod growing more and more evident. Lawler had been very cautious, as ordered, but had included enough of the astounding and outrageous that he evidently felt incontrovertibly supported by whatever proof he'd received from his unnamed informant to surely titillate the imagination of the reading public.

With a few clicks of the mouse, he had given the short article his official stamp of approval and sent it down to be inserted into the morning edition of the paper. Now it was just a question of waiting to see if the little article would raise as much public interest and curiosity as he expected it would. But just to be on the safe side, he sent a firmly worded directive to Lawler to provide copies of all the evidence that supported the allegations that he'd made in this exploratory article down to the legal department, along with a copy of the article that was being printed. There was no use in not being prepared for whatever reaction the late morning or early afternoon would bring – especially after this Miss Parker had a chance to read the article for herself.

Finished for the day at last, he logged off the network and shut down his terminal. It had been a long day for a Sunday – and tomorrow promised to be quite 'interesting' in the Chinese curse sense of the word. He'd been essentially waiting around until Lawler handed in his copy before calling it a day. The next morning's edition had been put to bed – his job for the day was through. It was now up to the men in the pressroom and the distribution department to get the paper on the streets and into the hands of the thousands of readers who would be expecting the paper on their doorsteps and at the newsstands bright and early in the morning.

"Get up, soldier! On your feet!"

Stiller jumped at the barked order, leaping from the thin mattress to land on his stocking feet at full attention and facing the bars of his cell. On the other side, one of the Blue Cove Police was fumbling with the keys to the cell while Colonel Fox looked on in wry disgust. "I'm being transferred?"

Fox drew himself up stiffly. "Colonel Daniel Stiller, by the order of the United States government, you are being removed to the stockade in Baltimore pending a court marshal. Once all military charges have been leveled and sentence passed, you will be remanded back into the civilian courts to stand trial for your crimes. Your personal effects that were taken into custody with you are being collected and will be shipped to Baltimore separately."

The police officer entered the cell with stainless steel hand and leg chains, which he first fastened around Stiller's waist and then one by one attached the cuffs to hold the wrists tightly to the waist and limit the size of step that he could take.

"I protest the use of chains, sir," Stiller stated formally.

"Protest to your heart's content, Colonel," Fox said with no small measure of satisfaction. "You are charged with a crime of violence; and that being the case, you will wear restraints when not being housed in a locked cell in a secured facility." He gestured to the police officer. "Let's get him out of here."

With that, Stiller felt the officer take a very firm hold of his arm and begin to drag him forward, out the open barred door to his cell and down the cellblock to the back access door. There, while Fox took charge of holding tightly to Stiller's other arm, the officer pressed a buzzer for the door to be remotely opened. Immediately beyond the door was the open sliding door of a van. The officer helped Stiller navigate the step up into the vehicle and then used yet another cuff to lock him down into the nearest seat.

"He's all yours, Colonel," Donaldson announced in a big voice, thoroughly happy to have the sullen military man out of his jail.

"Thank you, officer. Please extend my regards to your Chief. I'll be in touch with him as Colonel Stiller's military case is settled." Fox told the man as he reached for the front passenger door. He slipped into the vehicle and nodded at the Corporal at the wheel. "Let's go," he ordered.

Obediently, the Corporal started the engine and put the van in gear. It would be a quiet drive to Baltimore.

"Thanks for the ride, Mr. Tyler," Crystal said as she slipped out of the back seat of the little convertible. It was a good thing she had no intention of letting anybody at work know with whom she'd spent the day — she seriously doubted that she would be believed. Not only had she spent the afternoon and evening with the Chairman herself, but with the Assistant Chairman and Chief of Security!

"Not a problem, kid." Tyler had to smile. Crystal was a sweet girl — certainly she had a defensive shyness about her that she wore like a shield. She was polite, but had only truly warmed up to Sydney over the course of the day. "I'll see you around, then."

"Yes, sir." Crystal's eyes danced just a little, remembering her talk with Xing-Li the other night about this Mr. Tyler's penchant for wanting to set aside formalities when outside of the Centre.

"We know where she got that one from, don't we," Tyler smiled at Xing-Li as Crystal laughed and then scampered up the stairs, her key flashing in the headlights of the sports car. "At least I have YOU calling me Cody once in a while now."

"You don't expect that Crystal and I don't talk after work, do you?" Xing-Li chuckled as Tyler came around the front of the car to open the door for her and extended his hand down to help her rise from her seat. "She was asking plenty of questions yesterday. Especially after she got the invitation for the celebration today and wasn't sure she should come."

"I don't put anything past you anymore," Tyler stated frankly as he tucked Xing-Li's hand into his arm so that he could escort her to her door. "I'm finding that you are a very resourceful woman – both as a secretary and as a friend."

Xing-Li smiled and enjoyed the saunter to her front door. Tyler had been a very attentive escort after his time with Jarod and Sam had concluded outside and everyone had gathered at the huge dining table to eat. "I do my best, sir," she quipped at him.

He pulled her to a halt beneath the front landing and turned her to face him in the light of the nightlight that illumined the quartet of thresholds. "We're still not on the clock," he reminded her with a smile. "What's my name?"

"Cody, sir," she replied obediently, her smile just a little wider.

"Not only resourceful, but extremely stubborn," he retorted, his own smile widening as he gave a very gentle tug on her hand that drew her closer to him.

"That's what I've been told, sir," she tipped her head up so that she could watch his face as she played with him ever so gently. Both of the other times that she'd spent time with him outside work, he'd been very diligent not to seem as if he were invading her personal space. He'd not tried to take from her anything that wasn't offered already. But tonight, it seemed, he was ready to change the rules a little. She didn't fight to free her fingers from his.

"Say my name," he spoke softly, beginning to bend down to her.

"Cody," she managed to pronounce before his lips were pressed gently against hers for the space of a heartbeat. It was a sweet and unpresuming kiss, the like of which she'd not expected.

And then he was straightening up to look into her glowing, dark eyes with a smoldering gaze. "Am I going to have to make you practice until you have it right?" he asked with a voice that had lowered to a tone that took her breath away.

The very idea of getting a repeat kiss like that was far too great a temptation to resist. "I don't know, sir," she replied in a voice equally low and rich, "it could be."

He bent again and captured her lips with his, this time letting a little more excitement fuel the exchange. The hand that wasn't still held prisoner at her side came up and pressed softly against his chest as the kiss lasted a little longer. His other hand came up to trace the line of her chin as they parted again, although neither drew very far away. "Say it," he demanded in a voice that made her heart begin to beat faster.

"Cody," she pronounced immediately, and then closed her eyes as his lips once more descended on hers – and this time neither bothered to hide the very beginnings of a real passion. His arms moved to encircle her and pull her to him while her hand slipped up to his shoulder and then around his neck.

Xing-Li knew it was madness to enjoy as much as she did the touch of a man who was her superior at work – but the time they'd spent together in an informal setting had worked its magic. This was a man who knew how to thrill and yet knew how to not press his advantage. His arms were warm around her, and she felt safe.

When Tyler finally broke the kiss, it was to kiss her forehead and then the top of her head while enjoying the feeling of her soft and warm in his arms. "I'll see you in the morning," he promised, "and the next time we're out after hours, we'll see if you still need the practice."

She made no attempt to escape his hold. "I think I could learn to appreciate your lessons," she said quietly, hoping he could catch her subtext.

"If there's one thing a teacher appreciates, it's a willing student," he returned and kissed her yet again with feeling. Her other hand was freed in order to allow its former captor to move up to settle softly at her waist – and it slipped easily around his waist to hold him back. When the kiss ended, he held her very close for a long moment before letting his hands drop away. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Cody," she answered, fishing in her purse for her key and finally inserting it in the lock to open the door. "See you in the morning." She smiled as she saw him lift his hand and wiggle his fingers at her as she stepped backwards into the darkness of the apartment. Then the door was closed, and she had the light on inside her apartment.

Tyler swung his arms at his side for a moment, pleased at the progress he'd made in the last few minutes and feeling the emptiness of not having her there with him any longer, and then turned back to his car. In that very moment, he decided that he'd find a way to be able to spend more time with her outside of work as soon as it was reasonably feasible.

"And what if you actually are pregnant?" Parker asked Deb gently as she handed the girl the large kettle in which she'd cooked the pot of chili beans for the supper.

Deb shrugged in deceptive nonchalance and took the metal vessel from her. "If I'm pregnant, then I guess we get married sooner rather than later," she said in as strong a voice as she could manage.

"Is that what both of you want?"

Deb found the expression in the older woman's grey eyes to be understanding and sympathetic, and it helped relieve some of her nervousness at such a frank discussion. "We want to get married eventually," she said in a slightly less defensive tone. "That much we're sure of."

"Have you talked about this with Kevin since yesterday?" Miss Parker pressed carefully. "Are you certain that Kevin would want to keep the baby?"

"Oh yeah," Deb nodded, more than certain of that point. That had been the sole topic of discussion during their long walk in the park. Kevin had been shocked at her even mentioning the prospect of not having the baby or giving the child away for adoption after it was born. "And, to be honest, it would be part of US, you know?"

Parker nodded as she scoured the pan that had held the mountain of barbeque meat being kept warm in the oven. "Oh yeah," she repeated Deb's own words. After all, there was no way that she would want to lose Jarod's child if she turned up pregnant in the near future either. "What about your dad – how much of this does he know?"

Deb blushed and then went slightly pale at the thought of her father. "I told him that Kevin and I were in love," she replied slowly, "but I didn't tell him… the rest of it."

"Why?" Miss Parker's hands stilled in their work as she turned to look at her old friend's daughter who had in so many ways been like her own.

"I thought I'd wait until I knew if I'm pregnant or not," Deb told her hesitantly. "I figure that if I have to upset him, I'd rather have one great big upset rather than two big ones."

"That would certainly be easier on the two of you." Miss Parker could see some wisdom to her reticence. "So… tomorrow's the day, eh?"

"Yeah," Deb smiled at last. "I'll drive Grandpa into Dover and drop him and Kevin off at the hospital for his therapy session while I go on to the college health department. I have to work at the library tomorrow afternoon."

"And if you're pregnant – are you going to want some moral support when you go talk to your dad?"

Deb blinked and stared. "Are you saying that you'd go in with me?" she breathed, barely able to hope that she wouldn't have to handle the task alone. "Really?"

"If you want me there," Miss Parker told her gently, "then I'll be there. I can't promise that my being there will cut much mustard with your dad – he's going to be pissed with you no matter which way it goes, you know…"

"I know."

"And he's going to be pissed with ME for letting it happen…"

"Neither you nor Grandpa LET anything happen," Deb countered sharply. "What happened is MY responsibility – and Kevin's. If Daddy's going to get mad at anybody, I want him to get mad at me."

Kevin looked at Jarod as he heard Deb's exclamation through the kitchen door. "How mad IS Deb's dad going to get with her — OR me?"

"Broots is very protective of Deb, Kevin," Jarod hedged. "He's probably going to be plenty steamed – especially when he figures out that he was deliberately kept out of the loop for a length of time. If she's pregnant on top of everything else, he may well blow a gasket for a while."

"He wouldn't…" Kevin's voice faltered as he tried to speak the unacceptable.

"Wouldn't what?"

"Forbid her to see me anymore, would he?"

Jarod shook his head. "I doubt that anything anybody says will do much good to keep you two apart if you really want to be together," he said, lifting the final leaf from the dining table and leaning it gently against the wall so that the table could be returned to its more intimate size. "And considering that Deb seems to feel that her happiness is dependent upon your being together from now on, I seriously doubt that Broots will do much more than scold and complain very loudly and very vehemently before finally giving in to the inevitable. After all, nothing Mr. Parker ever did or said to Miss Parker ended up doing any good where it came to the two of us – and he really did try to sever our relationship. For what it's worth, I see a lot of us in you two."

Kevin tipped his head. "What do you mean?"

Jarod handed two of the trio of wooden table leaves to Kevin, then led the way to the hutch and pulled the narrow door open so that they could be stored away again. "Well, Missy was the first girl I ever met – Deb was the first girl you ever met. Once Missy and I connected, even though we worked at cross-purposes for a while, that was IT. I knew that she was the one for me. It may have taken her a while to sort through what her father had done to her, but eventually she figured it out to. When I came back at the beginning of the summer, it didn't take long for things to click back into place — and for me to realize that I'd never really wanted to be with anybody else. She was the one I wanted."

"That's how I've felt about Deb too," Kevin nodded, handing over the last of the leaves.

"That seems to be the way it works for us Pretenders," Jarod commented, closing the door.

"And Miss Parker's a Pretender too, isn't she?" Kevin asked pointedly.

Jarod gave Kevin a sharp glance. "Yes," he admitted slowly. "She is."

"Then you two were twice as destined."

"You're probably right," Jarod admitted after thinking about it for a bit. "Even staying completely away from her for years didn't make either of us feel any differently."

"I want that with Deb," Kevin said firmly.

Jarod put his arm around the younger Pretender's shoulders. "Something tells me that you already have it," he reassured him with a smile. "Now all you need to find out is whether you're going to be a father or not right off the bat…."

Kevin withered beneath the arm. "I know…"

"You can take a birdie-bath tonight," Miss Parker directed her son as the family began to stream through the back door of the elegant townhouse. "It's late, and you have school in the morning."

"I think I'm going to call it a night, if you don't mind," Margaret told them with a yawn. "This was a big day."

"Things will be a little more quiet from now on, Mom," Jarod said with a sideways smile, bending carefully to deposit a kiss on his mother's cheek without waking his sleeping daughter. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Good night, Maggie," Miss Parker echoed, patiently waiting her turn to give her future mother-in-law a quick peck on the cheek. "Sleep well."

"G'nite, Grandma." Davy trotted on ahead of everybody else toward the stairs and his bedroom to retrieve his pajamas.

"I'll put Sprite down," Jarod told Miss Parker, a hand at his little girl's head on his shoulder. "She's out like a light — there's no use trying to wake her for a bath."

"I can give her a bath in the morning before she gets dressed if you want," Margaret tossed back over her shoulder from deeper into the house.

"I'll meet you upstairs," Miss Parker told him quietly. "I have all this food to put away…"

Jarod nodded. "I'll see you up there." On his shoulder, Ginger sighed softly and stretched her one arm around her father's neck while pulling Bear tighter to her with the other. Jarod carried her through the darkened house and up the stairs behind his mother, turning and walking the few steps to the bedroom door and opening it.

"She did well today," Margaret whispered at him from in front of the door of the guestroom that was hers, "even with all the new people."

"Except with poor Sam, though," Jarod replied. "We'll have to work at getting her less frightened of him somehow."

"That will be quite the accomplishment," Margaret shook her head skeptically. "Goodnight," she whispered and disappeared through her door.

"Goodnight, Mom," he replied as he moved through the open doorway and paused for the moment it took his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness so that he could see his way to the side of the bed. His one arm dropped, depositing the backpack with all of her travelling toys and supplies on the floor so that he had a hand with which to reach out and turn on the clown nightlight. Then he pulled back the bedspread and covers and carefully laid her down into her pillow, making short work of removing her shoes and her favorite "buffa-fies" before pulling sheets and blankets over the little form and tucking her in.

"G'nite, Sprite," he said very quietly, bending over her to drop a kiss on her forehead and then rising to his feet. He looked around the room, seeing the shadows of the furniture that surrounded her — including a huge dollhouse that sat quietly in a corner. Missy had spent time in the attic of this old place, he realized, trying to bring out the best of what had been her childhood to share with her new daughter.

He shook his head. Just a few months ago, he would never have expected such sentimentality or willingness to dig through her past to excavate the good memories from the detritus of the bad without at least a great deal of prodding and encouragement. But now…

He heard her tucking Davy into bed with a soft voice as he walked toward their bedroom and turned on the light. It was the second night in his new home, and it still hadn't entirely sunk in that he was really here, that she was really his at last. He moved to his side of the bed, peeling off his tee shirt as he went.

"Davy wants to take Ginger to school with him and show her off SO badly," Miss Parker chuckled softly as she pushed the door closed and moved to her side of the bed.

"I think I'm going to see if she'll let Sydney work with her a bit — some one-on-one tutoring will do her good, I think." He tossed his clothing into the hamper after pulling on pajama bottoms and then pulled the covers back. "The sooner we can get her to the point that she can begin to function with other kids her age, the better."

"That's fine with me," Miss Parker said, drawing the baby blue nightgown over her head and taking aim with her own garments at the hamper on the other side of the room. "I'd just as soon he stay away from the archives for a while anyway, if you want to know the truth. Kevin can handle that end of things." She pulled her covers back and slipped between the sheets to join him after turning on her bedside lamp and turning off the overhead.

"Kevin's very capable," Jarod agreed, joining her between the sheets. "And for tomorrow at least, he can use that reading assignment to keep himself occupied mentally until Deb gets home from Dover."

She turned off the bedside lamp and moved to the center of the mattress where she snuggled down comfortable into Jarod's arms. "So… are you going into work with me tomorrow?" she asked in a low voice.

"Not yet," He replied, his hands smoothing across the silky skin of her shoulder. "I need to spend more time with Sydney yet — and maybe smooth the way for him to work with Sprite before he has to take off for his physical therapy. I'll be in Tuesday or the next day — whenever you have your next department heads' meeting — for a little while, at least."

"I need a functional head of Psychogenics…"

"You'll have one — but let Sydney bring me up to speed a little first," he replied, turning toward her and reaching for her with both hands now. "Tell you what: we'll start talking shop in the morning. I have something far more interesting on my mind right now…"

"Oh really?" she asked, closing her eyes in enjoyment of the soft caresses he was making, and appreciating the gentle way he'd already moved the thin strap of her nightgown off her shoulder. "I can't imagine what that might be…"

"Allow me to demonstrate then…" he purred in a low and seductive tone and then brought his lips to meet hers in a kiss that grew quickly and steadily in passion.

The white truck rolled up to the loading dock and stopped. The driver heaved himself from his seat with a sigh — he had nearly a hundred miles yet to drive, and some thirty stops to make before his "day" was through.

"About time," growled one of the loaders who had been standing and waiting on the dock for more than fifteen minutes for this last truck to arrive. "You're later than usual tonight."

"Don't blame me," the driver snarled back with a emphysema cough. "The damned ignition on this bucket has been going out for weeks — but do you think the stupid mechanics can find anything wrong when I report it? NOOoooo…"

"I don't give a shit about your ignition, Fred," the loader growled again, pushing himself away from the outer wall of the printing plant and pushing a button that sounded a horn within. "I just want to get this load outta here so I can get off work ALMOST on time, for a change."

"Bitch, bitch, bitch," Fred the driver hissed softly to himself as he unlocked the doors at the back of his trailer and threw them open. "Here you go, then," he announced for others to hear, then stood aside for the forklift to begin loading the pallets of papers. As was his habit while he was stuck standing around and waiting for others to do their work, he wandered over to one of the pallets and gazed down at the top half of the front page in curiosity. His eyes widened, and he quickly decided that he'd pick up a copy of the morning edition when he'd finished his run.

Across the very top of the front page was a banner giving hints to things buried within, and one of them had definitely caught his eye. There was a picture of the pretty babe who was the Chairman of that place in Delaware that had blown up a while back, but the bold print next to it said: "What is she hiding?"

THAT ought to make for good reading, Fred thought to himself as the forklift made its final exit from the back of his trailer and he could close it up and lock it for the nightly delivery run. Maybe even good enough to warrant a coffee and bagel.

Feedback, please:


	27. Good Morning, Sunshine

Resolutions – 27

Good Morning, Sunshine…

by MMB

Ginger watched with wide eyes as Davy shouldered his backpack after taking his breakfast dishes to the sink. "Where oo go?" she asked around a mouthful of cereal.

"You, Sprite, not oo," Davy reminded her.

"Where yyou go, Davy?" she repeated obediently, still wanting to know.

"School," he answered with a glance around the table. His mother had tucked his week's lunch money into the front pocket of the backpack, he knew — she always had done that by the time he got up from the breakfast table. But today there were more at the table than usual, so that he hadn't noticed her doing that little chore for him for a change. He had been distracted by his father joining him at the table and sipping at his coffee and his new sister tumbling into her seat, still in her flannel pajamas. Now she had at least poured herself a helping of cereal and was contentedly eating – but he found himself wishing that she were dressed and ready to go with him. "Dad, when's Sprite going to start school too?"

"I'm going to talk to your Grandpa about that today," Jarod answered and then showered a smile on his daughter, who had turned her head to look at him and follow the conversation from speaker to speaker. "We need to find out how much she remembers, so we can work to bring her back up to speed with kids her own age. And we'll have to talk to the school district about permission for home schooling her until she's ready to go with you."

"Is that going to take long?" the boy asked wistfully.

Jarod chuckled. "That depends entirely on your sister," he said and reached out to pat Davy on the shoulder. "Have a good day."

"Thanks." Davy turned back to Ginger. "You be good and learn lots from Grandpa so you can come to school with me soon," he told her very seriously.

"'Kay," she replied hesitantly, not exactly sure what learning from Grandpa Sydney had to do with anything but wanting to please her big brother nonetheless.

Miss Parker smiled at Jarod, listening to the two youngsters. From the look on her face, Ginger idolized her brother already — and maybe Davy's encouragement for her to work with her grandfather would do some good. "Be good, little man," she said, giving her son his usual kiss on the cheek before he headed out.

"See you later, Mom." Davy headed toward the back door.

"Don't forget to come home to your Grandpa's house this afternoon," Jarod reminded the boy as the screen door opened. "We'll pick you up there."

"'Kay. Bye, Dad." And Davy was gone through the screen door, his steps just a little livelier for having two parents and a younger sister to tell farewell to and to return home to later on.

"Me go 'kool too someday, Daddy?" Ginger asked her father anxiously.

"Yes," he reassured her. "But we need to help you catch up first. It's been a long time since you've been in school, hasn't it?"

Ginger nodded with wide, serious eyes. Her school days had abruptly ended on the day that she'd sought shelter in the silence — a week or so after she'd been removed from the Big Man's house. "Me wanna go 'kool with Davy."

"Then you'll need to let Grandpa help you," Miss Parker pressed very carefully. "He's a really good teacher — he taught your Daddy nearly everything he knows, and I bet he can teach you too."

"Good morning," Margaret greeted everyone from the doorway still clad in a quilted bathrobe over her nightgown.

"Goo' morning, Gamma," Ginger answered brightly and then stuck another heaping spoon of food in her mouth. "Dffhe g'hn…"

Miss Parker reached over and patted the girl on the head. "Nobody can understand you with your mouth full, Sprite," she told the child gently. "Chew, swallow, and then try it again."

"How'd you sleep?" Jarod asked, pointing his mother to a kitchen chair and rising to bring her a fresh cup of coffee.

"Well, thank you," Margaret smiled. Jarod was still walking around the kitchen in a pair of jeans and a white tee shirt while Missy was quite elegantly dressed and coiffed. "Almost ready for work?" she asked.

"Davy gone," Ginger finally announced after working hard to chew and swallow like She had told her to. "Him go 'kool."

"Already!" Margaret gave her granddaughter a wide-eyed smile. "I'm sorry I missed him."

"I gotta go," Miss Parker drained the rest of her coffee and rose to put the mug in the sink. "I'll see you at Sydney's later this afternoon, right?"

"Sounds good to me." Jarod rose too and put an arm around her from the back so that he could kiss the back of her neck before she could escape. "Don't you work too hard now," he told her in a soft voice.

"I'm a Parker," she reminded him with a lofty smile, her eyes dancing to show she was playing with him a little, "and we always work too hard." She tipped her head back and to the side so that she could share a very gentle kiss with him, appreciating yet again just how much it meant to have him HERE, with her, and not thousands of miles away.

"Have a good day, Missy," Margaret said from behind her coffee mug.

"'Bye," Ginger chimed in.

"I'll see you later, Sprite," Miss Parker made a quick detour so that she could give her new little girl a hug and kiss on the top of the head. "You take good care of your Daddy and Grandma while I'm gone, OK?"

"'Kay," the child nodded seriously.

Once more the back screen door slammed. "My goodness, but things get started early here," Margaret commented with a stifled yawn. "Or is it that I'm still not functioning in Eastern time yet?"

"I think you've still got some jet lag to work out," Jarod told her honestly. "I'm having a hard time getting used to the time change myself. I think the only one of us who's made the change quickly is our Sprite here."

Margaret didn't get a chance to answer before the telephone on the counter rang. Jarod shrugged as he watched his mother close her mouth, and he then rose and picked up the receiver. "Yes?"

"Miss Parker? Jarod?" The voice on the other end of the line was Broots', and he sounded excited or upset.

"Mr. Broots," Jarod smiled into the air. "You just missed her — she's on her way to work."

"Damn… I mean…"

"What's up?" Jarod's face grew serious. "Is something wrong?"

"Have you read the newspaper yet this morning?"

"No…" Jarod glanced over at the kitchen table, on which the morning newspaper was folded in half and left at his place for when he had time to read through it. "Why?"

"Read it." Broots' voice sounded as if he was angry. "I'll try to reach Miss Parker at her office in a little bit."

"My God, Broots, what's going on?"

"Just read it. You'll know." Jarod frowned and hung up the receiver when Broots unexpectedly disconnected the call without any of the civilized niceties. That was completely out of character for the man, who was a master at the mild mannered persona most of the time.

"What is it?" Margaret asked, concerned at her son's expression.

"He wanted me to read the paper this morning," Jarod said, walking over to the table, sitting down and unfolding it so he could begin to read, starting with the banners at the top of the front page. "Oh, my God!"

The rap on George Canfield's door was sharp and brief. Canfield opened the door and let Special Agent Gillespie into his spacious apartment, looking around after the FBI man had entered to see whether anybody was outside to notice his early morning guest. Once the door was closed again, he turned to find Gillespie retrieving a small black plastic case from his jacket pocket.

"Are you ready for this?" Gillespie asked, opening the little case and withdrawing a thin strip of metal barely thick enough to see with the naked eye.

"No," Canfield answered honestly, "but I want to get it over and done with."

"Where's the jacket you intend to wear today?" was the next question.

"Hold on." Canfield walked quickly into his bedroom and retrieved from his bed the elegant suit jacket that he'd intended to wear that day.

Gillespie waited until the jacket had been donned before approaching the Senator. "I seriously doubt that anybody will ever guess that you're wearing a wire," he grinned and then lifted the silken lapel to insert the thin wire into the facing of the garment. "You'll have to trust that we'll be listening — but I can guarantee you we will! Just act normally, and hopefully things will be just fine."

"Are you sure they won't know?" Canfield asked nervously.

"Not if you don't give it away with your jitters," Gillespie noted crisply and critically. "You gotta get a hold of yourself, Senator."

"I'm trying," Canfield protested, "But I've never done anything like this before…"

"You're not doing anything," Gillespie informed the legislator calmly. "This little piece of spyware is doing all of it for you. Your job is just to sit there and participate in the meeting like you usually do — nothing more, and nothing less. Don't try to lead the conversation any more than you usually do, and just relax. They won't know — and with any luck, you won't have to wear this jacket again."

"But what if they don't say anything you can use? How will I know…"

Gillespie closed down the little plastic case and slipped it back into his pocket. "Either I or my boss will be in touch with you this evening and let you know if you need to wear the suit again or whether your job is finished. If it's finished," he started towards the door of the apartment, "then you'll need to get yourself in contact with a good attorney. Hell, you probably wouldn't be out of line to start letting your fingers do the walking through the yellow pages under 'Attorney' as it is."

Canfield shuddered. "And where will your men be?"

"Not far behind the limo you're in," the agent reassured him. "If we hear anything over the wire that sounds like you're getting in any kind of trouble, we'll move in. But for as long as you can keep cool, calm and collected, things should go smoothly."

"And I'll have a deal on the table when it's all over?" Canfield insisted.

Gillespie shrugged. "More than likely. You do realize that you stand a good chance of being censured by the Senate Ethics Committee, don't you?"

"I know." The Senator's head was down. "I have it coming."

Gillespie frowned. This Senator Canfield had a defeated attitude about him that was seriously troubling. "It won't be the end of the world, you know," he reassured the legislator. "I'm willing to bet that the prosecutor will be willing to make sure that you don't serve much time, if any at all, in exchange for your assistance now and testimony later on."

Canfield nodded, working at integrating the information, then looked up at Gillespie. "I suppose you'd better get back to wherever it is you're going to hang out," he suggested with a return of the nervousness. "It wouldn't do for anybody to notice you were in or out of here and start asking questions."

"You hang in there," Gillespie gave reassurance one more college try. "You'll hear from me this evening, I promise."

"Sure. Thanks." Canfield held the door open for him and then closed it again tightly after once more checking to see if there were any witnesses to what had happened this early in the morning. He brought his right hand up and smoothed down the opposite lapel, under which the FBI agent had inserted the thin wire. No, he thought to himself, Gillespie is right — there's no way of noticing that the wire was there.

He headed in the direction of the bathroom and the medicine cabinet. For the first time in a very long time, he was going to need a relaxant. His fingers hovered over the little cobalt plastic pill bottle for a long moment before he finally grasped it and twisted the top open.

Maybe with this he could survive the next twelve hours with something resembling his sanity intact. Just maybe.

"Good morning, Mei," Miss Parker breezed past her secretary with a contented smile on her face.

"Good morning, Miss Parker," the Chinese woman replied with an answering smile. "I have your day's schedule already out for you on your desk. You have about a half hour until you're supposed to meet with representatives from the West Dover Mental Institute about the prognosis of the mental patients you transferred there?"

"Oh yes." Miss Parker remembered those poor souls all too well. "Will I be seeing Dr. Stevens?"

Mei-Chiang rechecked the appointment calendar. "Yes, ma'am. He's part of the West Dover staff, I understand."

"He is now," Miss Parker corrected her absently. "Fine. Do me a favor and get me a cup of coffee — nice and strong."

"You didn't sleep well?" Mei-Chiang inquired in concern.

"I just didn't get any sleep until late," Miss Parker answered honestly but without any clarification — not at all willing to admit that half the reason she was as sleepy as she was this morning was her own fault and not just Jarod's. Having him back in her life and back in her arms again made for an intoxicating dalliance — one she'd have to be a little more circumspect with when indulging when there was work the next morning. "Thanks, Mei," she told her secretary and then pushed through into her inner sanctum.

The telephone began ringing almost immediately, and Mei-Chiang paused on her way to get Miss Parker's coffee to field the call. "Miss Parker's office…" she stated briskly.

"My name is Broots, and I'm a friend of Miss Parker's. I need to speak to her right away," the voice on the telephone stated without hesitation.

"Just one moment," she said and put the caller on hold while she activated the intercom. "Miss Parker, there's a Mister Broots on line one for you – he says that it's important."

"Thanks, Mei," Miss Parker said after taking two hurried steps to her desk to answer the intercom buzzer. She put her briefcase on her desk and reached for the receiver. "Hey there, Scooby! What's got you up and bothered this early in the morning?"

"Miss Parker, have you read the morning newspaper yet?" Broots asked, obviously not in the mood for idle chit-chat.

Miss Parker frowned slightly. "No," she told him. "Is there a problem?"

"You might call it that," Broots answered, looking down at where he had the article advertised by the front banner open in front of him. "Listen to this: We all have seen the footage of the valiant lady Chairman of the Delaware firm known as The Centre as she emerged from what was little more than a hole in the ground after rescuing literally hundreds of her employees after a bomb blast. But how much does the public actually know about The Centre itself – of the kind of work it did? This reporter has been unexpectedly made aware of just what this supposed think tank has been up to for the last few decades, and the question now is, how much is it safe to know? Perhaps a more immediate question might be just how much Miss Parker might be hiding about her role in…"

"WHAT?" Miss Parker's legs grew weak beneath her, and she sagged into her chair as if no longer able to stand. "Who wrote this?"

"A man by the name of David Lawler," Broots answered her in a frustrated voice. "What do you think – do we have a disgruntled ex-employee who's trying a smear campaign?"

"God, I don't know," she sighed in reply, racking her brain to come up with an explanation of such an explosive and potentially damaging article. "Read the rest of it to me – no, cancel that. I'll have Mei bring me a copy."

"Miss Parker," Broots warned, "it mentions Jarod by name – and the Pretender Project. It doesn't include any actual facts, just asks an awful lot of leading questions that I'm not sure you want to have to answer right now."

"Damn." The expletive was voiced softly, but Broots could hear the frustration and deep anger that lay behind the short and succinct little word. "I should have known that things couldn't just begin to settle down so that I could begin to do business like a reputable and legitimate think tank director should." She put up a finger to halt Mei-Chiang from leaving the office too soon after delivering the coffee she'd ordered such a short while earlier.

"I just thought you should know," Broots said, his voice finally apologetic rather than angered or frustration. "What are you going to do?"

"I've got to see what I'm up against," she replied briskly. "I'll be in touch – I may need your computer skills, and I'm hoping you're up to doing some work from there."

"Lay it on me, Miss Parker," he replied with determination. "I'm bored stiff here – no pun intended – and could use something meaty to get my teeth into."

"Good. I'll be in touch," she nodded.

"I'll be here, Miss Parker," he assured you. "Until they get me out of this damned cast, I'm not going anywhere."

"Thanks, Broots." She hung up the receiver and turned to her secretary. "I need a copy of this morning's paper, and I need it like yesterday."

Mei-Chiang could hear the steel behind the voice, and she nodded. "Yes, ma'am. Anything else?"

Miss Parker sighed. "I really do need to talk to the West Dover people – but cancel the rest of my morning appointments and get the Legal department to send up someone who can tell me what I want to know."

The telephone rang again, and Mei-Chiang's hand was quicker to reach for the receiver. "Miss Parker's office…" Then she held out the implement. "It's Jarod."

"Get me that paper, Mei," Miss Parker directed as she took the phone from her secretary and put it up to her ear. "I heard," she said without preamble.

"Broots called you," Jarod guessed.

"We really don't need this right now," she sighed in frustration. "I'm going to get Legal to look at the article and see if there's anything libelous or slanderous in it that we can go after."

"Did you dis this Lawler fellow, Parker?" he asked immediately. "Did you do anything to piss him off – at a party a few months ago, perhaps, or maybe blow him off when he made a pass at you…"

"I don't know a David Lawler, Jarod," she snapped back. "I make it a rule never to talk to reporters anyway. Besides, I've got a child at home – I don't exactly have time to go schmoozing with the press and the corporate suits anymore."

"All right, then do you suppose this is more left-over bilge from Raines' administration slopping over into yours?" he asked next, refusing to let her mood affect him in his searching for an explanation.

She shook her head, realizing that he was putting his skills to work trying to understand the situation and deciding that growling AT Jarod would do little good. "I don't know that there's any way to know short of talking to the bastard Lawler himself," she growled anyway, "and the moment I hear from Legal, that's EXACTLY what I intend to do."

"Whoa! Hold it right there, Parker," Jarod cautioned. "You go blowing your top to a reporter over an exploratory article like this, and he's going to KNOW that he's hit a nerve. You're going to have to stay cool, calm and collected until we figure out just exactly which direction this is coming from."

"Cool, calm and collected nothing – I want to rip this reporter's balls off and shove them up his ass to his throat, Jarod," she spat and struck her blotter with a clenched fist. "And THEN I have more interesting plans for whatever son of a bitch editor rubber-stamped this article – and I figure stump-hanging is too good for that shit-head! In the last few months, my twin brother has been murdered, my father shot, I've been kidnapped, had my headquarters blown to smithereens, my best friend mangled, my son and foster daughter kidnapped and practically killed – I'm not exactly in the mood for being genteel or mealy-mouthed."

"Shhh! Missy! Calm down before you get your ulcer all riled up again!" Jarod barked at her more sharply than normal in order to break through what he knew was a red curtain of absolute rage. "You don't need to end up in the hospi…"

"DAMN IT!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, then folded in on herself. She leaned her forehead into her hand again. "Damn it!"

"Get Tyler and Sam going through the files of people who have recently been let go, and let's see if we can find out who gave this reporter his information. I've got to go over to Sydney's for a while before he leaves for therapy…"

"Oh God – what about Syd?" Miss Parker straightened again and blanched. "This is going to hit him hard, Jarod – how are we going to soften the blow?"

"I'll prepare him myself," Jarod promised, "and I'd better get myself over there before he reads the article on his own. I'll come in to the Centre after I'm through with Sydney so we can start to work some sort of answer to this."

"Just make sure Sydney doesn't use this as another reason to fall into the deep end of things," she begged. "He's been through enough lately."

"I'll do what I can. You get a hold of yourself and calm down. Read the story, so we'll all be on the same page when I get there. Talk to Tyler and Sam. Talk to Legal. Hang in there."

"I still want to kill somebody," she hissed at him.

"I know, Missy," Jarod commiserated. "But I didn't come all the way across the continent to have to visit you in prison. I'll see you in a few hours."

She hung up the phone without saying goodbye and then stared out the casement window of her office at the slowly rising skeleton of her new Centre. "Shit," she spat quietly, rising and walking over to watch the construction workers absently while waiting for Mei-Chiang to round up a copy of the offending newspaper. "Shit, shit, shit…."

"Where oo go, Daddy?"

"You, Sprite, not oo."

"Where you go, Daddy?"

"I need to go over to Grandpa Sydney's right away," he explained to his bright-eyed little girl, with a cautionary glance up into his mother's gaze. "I need to prepare Sydney for that article and its consequences as well as talk to him about tutoring Sprite and a few other, private issues."

"I think Sprite and I will just hang around the house today," Margaret told him, hoping to assist by removing herself and the little girl as points of worry. "You go ahead and do whatever it is that you have to – I'll see what Missy has in the fridge and have some kind of meal ready for everyone when you get back this evening, then."

"Daddy go wo'k now?"

"Maybe for a little while," Jarod said, swooping down and grabbing Ginger up into his arms to give her a tight hug and ignoring the feel of damp hair against his arm from her recent bath. "But you can stay with Grandma, right?"

"Gamma he'p me play dollhouse?" The bright, dark eyes gazed up into her grandmother's expectantly.

"I'm sure that can be arranged," Margaret nodded, then gave Jarod a quick hug. "I think I can even remember the way to Grandpa Sydney's house, and we can walk if you want to go play in the park later on."

"Thanks, Mom," Jarod breathed gratefully. He dug in his shirt pocket and pulled out a shiny, new key and handed it to her. "Missy meant to give this to you yesterday, but forgot with all the excitement – and you may very well need it today after all so you can go in and out as you please. For what it's worth, I'll get you a key to my car either today or tomorrow too, so you can have wheels when you need them." He gazed at her a little sadly. "I'm just sorry that this whole nasty business had to bust open during what was supposed to be a vacation for you…"

She shook her red and silvered head vigorously. "I'm just glad that I could be here when you needed an extra hand," she countered. "You go on now. Sprite and I will be just fine."

Jarod gave Ginger a quick buss on the cheek and then put her back down to hug his mother equally quickly. "See you two later."

"Bye, Daddy." Ginger put her hand in her grandmother's and watched her father head toward the back of the house. She looked up. "Gamma come he'p with dollhouse now?"

"OK, kiddo – let's go see what all you have in this dollhouse of yours," Margaret nodded with a big smile, then walked with Ginger towards the front stairs, swinging their joined hands to and fro with every step.

David Lawler stretched back with his coffee in hand and feet on the coffee table, the morning edition beside him and folded back so that he could see his article actually in print. Hitchens had come through for him magnificently – that top banner tag had caught his eye very quickly and drawn his attention to where the article was located, on the second page. He sipped at his coffee and thought about just what he was going to do that day at the office. Would he begin to make telephone calls and try to arrange interviews with the main cast of characters at the Centre? Would he be fielding calls from other media people, asking permission to reprint the article and/or interviews of HIM?

When the phone rang, he simply reached out for the handset and answered without thinking. "This is David Lawler."

"Good work, Mr. Lawler, for an opening article."

Lawler's feet hit the floor abruptly – it was Whisper Man. "You saw it?"

"I was wondering when you'd feel you had enough to get the ball rolling," the whisper continued. "

"Everything I have is circumstantial, and you know it," Lawler countered. "Until I start talking to people who know and can lead me to irrefutable proof…"

"Everything you have is a copy of things that I have in original form," Whisper Man snapped. "You can see clearly the Centre logo on most of the documents. Emails, well, they're harder to substantiate without doing a forensic job on a hard drive…"

"I still don't get it," Lawler told him stubbornly. "Why are you doing this?"

"You don't think that people should know what kind of monkey business this media darling Miss Parker has been up to in her life?" the whisper demanded.

"Whether I do or don't is moot," Lawler argued. "You have to have an agenda to be exposing the Centre this way."

"I have my reasons," the whisper conceded slowly. "They are none of your business, however."

"They ARE my business if you're trying to smear Miss Parker with things that she had very little control over," Lawler snapped. "I'm all for exposing criminal organizations whenever and wherever possible. But from what I read on the Centre's own website, Miss Parker has only been at the helm of the Centre for a month and a half – she took over just before the bomb took out her headquarters. Meanwhile, the documents you gave me – that you gave me copies of, that is – are years old."

"It doesn't matter," Whisper Man countered firmly. "Whether she was in a position to prevent or not is immaterial. The fact is that much of what those documents allege is plainly against the law. If she knew any part of it and didn't report it to the authorities, it makes her guilty of conspiracy."

Lawler took a long sip of his coffee and thought about what Whisper Man was saying. At least superficially, it made sense. "Are you saying that she did know…"

"Oh, come on now," the whisper chided harshly. "She headed up the search party for Jarod after his escape – and did so for more than five years. In order for her to do her job, she had to both know what the Pretender Project was all about – which in and of itself makes her guilty of conspiracy. By cooperating with the search, it also made her guilty of conspiracy to kidnap. Don't be fooled by that pretty face – she's not the kind of person you want to mess with."

"And yet, it's MY by-line on this article," Lawler reminded his source pointedly. "If she's going to come after anybody, it's going to be ME – because this article did just mess with her, big time!"

"I'm betting that she'll be rather understated in any response she makes," the whisper told him. "You did a good job staying just far enough away from anything that might constitute libel or slander while still putting very uncomfortable questions out into the open where she'd going to have to answer to people she doesn't normally have to even talk to." The whisper paused. "Don't get your panties in a knot. She's not going to come after you."

"So you say," Lawler grumbled. "So… are you going to give me anything else to work with?"

"I told you, you have all you need to get you started. Once you start getting confirmation of some of this from sources you develop yourself, you aren't going to need me at all anymore. That's why I called today. You won't hear from me again, Mr. Lawler. You're on your own."

"Wait a minute…"

"It has been very… satisfying… doing business with you." Lawler pulled the receiver away from his ear as he heard a very final-sounding click of disconnection.

He frowned as he put the receiver back down on the couch next to him and picked up the newspaper to stare at his own article. Something wasn't right – and he was starting to get the idea that he'd been used.

He'd continue to investigate the Centre – there was enough there that needed at least clarification. But there were ways and means to investigate just who the hell had started to feed him information too. And if he HAD been used, then heaven help the bastard that set him up.

Dr. Lauren Mitchell looked up as the door to her laboratory swung open and let in a man in a suit. Down on these levels, being visited by suits was no longer as normal an occurrence as it had been before the days of Miss Parker's administration, so it drew her attention away from the complicated set of chemical formulas she'd been staring at for the past hour. "Hey there," she smiled up at Hugh, whom she hadn't seen for the better part of a week.

"Hey there," the big sweeper replied, touched that he'd been greeted with a smile.

"What brings you down this deep into the Centre?"

He grinned a little wider and came closer. "Mr. Atlee got a call early this morning from the Blue Cove PD. Seems that the military has taken custody of your Colonel Stiller and transferred him to a military stockade outside Baltimore. Mr. Atlee thought that you might like to know that he thinks that it will be safe for you to return to your home."

Lauren's face broke open into a dazzling smile. "Really?" she asked excitedly. "You don't think that he'll be let off so that he can just come back, do you?"

"No, ma'am," Hugh shook his head. "There's enough evidence that even if the military lets him walk, he'd have to face a civilian court for his crimes against you – and I seriously doubt that the military would let him free. He'd just get transferred back to the nearest jail cell – and you'd be informed ahead of time, no doubt."

"So I can go home finally," she mused to herself and then looked up again. "I appreciate your coming down and telling me."

He smiled at her again. "Not a problem, Dr. Mitchell. I knew that you were wanting to get back into your own digs as soon as possible."

"I won't have you hanging around anymore, will I?" she asked, some side effects of the fact of her situation finally sinking in.

"You won't be needing me anymore, ma'am," he told her. "With Stiller in Baltimore…"

"I didn't mind having you around," Lauren said frankly, surprising even herself with the level of honesty. "I didn't, you know…"

"I appreciate that, ma'am. I…" Hugh stumbled, not knowing whether it was entirely proper to tell one of the research scientists that he'd found her company very stimulating on those evenings when she'd nervously insisted that he stay with her inside her little temporary shelter. "I enjoyed your company too." He shifted nervously and noted that she'd looked back down at her virtually unintelligible formulas. "I suppose I should let you get back…" he said, turning to leave.

"Hugh?"

He turned again to find her looking at him with an unreadable expression in her gaze. "Yes, ma'am?"

"When do you get off tonight?"

Hugh blinked at her. Was she asking him what he thought she was asking him? "Five-thirty, ma'am."

Lauren started to smile. "How about I fix you supper at the apartment, and maybe you can help me get moved back into my own place?" She gazed evenly into his startled face. "I had help getting moved in the first place – I could use a hand…"

"Are you sure, Doctor Mitchell?"

"Say, six o'clock at my apartment for pizza and salad – and maybe some beer at my house when we're finished?" she continued, forcing her voice not to reflect the hesitation she was feeling at taking the lead in such a way.

Hugh began to smile in return. "That sounds like an interesting way to spend an evening, ma'am. I'd like that a lot."

Lauren felt the worry fall away from her shoulders. "Good," she beamed up at him. "I'll see you at six then."

"Yes, ma'am. It's a date." Hugh turned away reluctantly and started out the lab and back towards the elevator that would lead him back up to ground level. Had he actually been able to make a friend of the good doctor in the midst of a personal trial for her — he, a mere sweeper?

Suddenly the hours until quitting time looked very long and very boring.

"He's in the kitchen, still drinking coffee," Kevin announced as he opened the door and let Jarod in. "I think he was reading the newspaper when I left."

Jarod worked hard not to flinch visibly. "How's his mood today?"

"About the same as usual for a day he has to go in for therapy," Kevin grinned. "He's a little grumpy because he knows that Pete's going to be stretching him further than he's made the CPM machine go, and that it's probably going to hurt – but otherwise…"

"Where's Deb?"

"She came down and started talking to him a few minutes ago," Kevin said with a soft smile. "I think she's scared about what she might find out today and wanted to get a little moral support."

"Are you ready for the news?" Jarod couldn't help asking.

Kevin shook his head. "Not really – but I really don't have a choice, do I?"

Jarod landed a sympathetic hand on the younger man's shoulders. "I'll let him know that I want to talk to him before he leaves and then hang around out here with you until he's finished with Deb."

"That's fine with me," Kevin replied. "You can help read through these files while you're here then – I'll bet you know most of what all is documented here in the first place, and can figure out better than I can what should be saved and what should be incinerated."

"Getting tired of reading ancient history, are you?" Jarod grinned.

"Sydney promised that he'd try to re-train me as a Pretender when we get through this mess," the young Pretender told him, gesturing at the tall stack of boxes that had yet to be disemboweled and gone through. "I'd like to have it happen sometime before I start to get as grey as he is."

"He offered to re-train you?" Jarod was surprised. "Do you have any idea what all that will entail?"

"It doesn't matter," Kevin replied evenly. "I'd like to be able to work as a Pretender to support Deb and me eventually – and to do that, I'll need someone to correct all the errors that Vernon made with me to begin with."

"Sydney's the best," Jarod nodded, "and if he's willing, I'll bet Miss Parker will be able to make use of your talent."

"That's what I'm hoping."

"OK, then let me go tell Sydney I'm here, and then I'll be right out to give you a hand."

"Thanks." Kevin watched the older Pretender walk through the dining room on his way to the kitchen and the den beyond. Jarod would know if the re-training process was possible – and he hadn't been pessimistic at all. That boded well, and made it even more important that the stack of boxes in the corner be dealt with as soon as possible. Especially if he had a baby on the way…

Jarod knocked gently on the doorjamb between the kitchen and dining room and then peeked his head around the corner. Deb was in a kitchen chair facing Sydney, who was sitting upright and looking quite contented being unencumbered by his therapy machine yet again. The morning paper was folded in half and sitting between the two coffee cups on the table. "I don't want to interrupt, but I'd like claim a chance to talk to you before you take off for Dover," he told his mentor. "It's important."

"Just give me a few minutes, and we can talk," Sydney replied with a nod in Deb's direction. "We're just finishing up."

"I'll be out with Kevin, then," Jarod told him and pulled back to give the team in the kitchen their privacy back.

Sydney turned back to his granddaughter. "So… how many times have you had this new nightmare?"

"Last night and the night before," she told him quietly. "I really miss having Kevin with me in the night, Grandpa – he always can help me get out of the dream…"

"You're going to the doctor today, aren't you?" he reminded her gently, "and if you're not pregnant, you'll be taking care of necessary things, right?"

Deb blushed. "Yes."

"Then there's no reason you can't be with Kevin tonight, ma petite," Sydney told her with a soft smile. "Either way, after today, keeping the two of you apart won't make much sense anymore."

"I was afraid that you'd make us have to go find our own place," Deb told him honestly, "that you wouldn't approve of what we were doing unless we either moved out or got married and moved out…"

Sydney shook his head. "I may be a lot older than you, and I know I raked you over the coals pretty hard at first, but I'm not a complete prude, Deb," he chided gently. "And I do remember what it was like to be young and in love." He held out a hand to her, which she rose and took. "Maybe I'm being a little selfish, but by letting you two begin your life together under my roof, I'm hoping I can help smooth the way a little. At the very least, your staying here means I can keep you both safe from the external pressures that sometimes can kill relationships that are just getting started." He kissed the back of her hand and then let it go. "So go on now and let me talk to Jarod for a while — we can discuss this further while on the way to Dover."

"OK." She bent and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "Thanks, Grandpa. By the way, have I told you I love you lately?"

The older man's face grew soft. "Je t'aime aussi, ma petite," he whispered to her, his heart in his eyes. "And I know I haven't told you that often enough lately either."

She stayed bent long enough to give him a tight hug, which he returned in kind. She then straightened and with a clear voice called out, "Jarod, your turn," with a bemused look on her face. "Remember, now, we need to leave in a little over a half-hour, or we'll both be late to our appointments."

"I'll remember," Sydney promised as Jarod's footsteps could be heard approaching.

"You doing OK?" Jarod asked the young woman as they passed in the dining room just outside the kitchen doorway.

"I'm doing the best I can right now," Deb answered honestly. "But I think I'll go monopolize Kevin's time while you're with Grandpa. Just keep in mind that we have to be on the road in about a half-hour, OK?"

"You got it." Jarod stood aside so that she could move toward the foyer and then made his way into the kitchen. "How are you doing this morning?" he asked in a bright tone that he truly didn't feel at the moment.

"I never enjoy Mondays very much — not that I ever used to," Sydney said, reaching for what was left of the tepid coffee in the bottom of his coffee cup. "Would you mind giving me a refill? I'm still working off the last of effects of the pain medication Deb gave me last night."

"Sure." Jarod took the coffee cup from the outstretched hand and carried it to where the coffee maker sat on the counter. "Sydney, there's a few things we need to discuss this morning," he began as he pulled the nearly empty carafe from the coffee maker and drained it into Sydney cup.

"Considering that it's still relatively early in the morning and you don't live in this house anymore, I figured as much," Sydney replied, taking back the cup. "Thank you. So… what's so important that you had to beat an early path over here?"

Jarod seated himself where Deb had been just moments before. "Easy stuff first. I was wondering if you might be up to a little tutoring job with Sprite — giving her some quality home schooling to bring her up to speed with other kids her age so she can go back to school eventually?"

"She still hasn't entirely accepted me, you know," Sydney reminded his former protégé. "I'd be glad to work with her, but I don't want you to be upsetting her by leaving her with me when she's not entirely certain that I'm someone she's safe to be left with."

"I think that should clear up once she gets to know you better," Jarod replied, "but I can see your point. We can discuss this a little later on, then? Maybe Mom can bring her over here in the afternoons so she can get used to you? She likes the park across the street…"

"They all love the park across the street," Sydney chuckled, "even Kevin. But absolutely — have your mother bring her over. I'd be delighted to see her — and to talk with your mother again. I have a feeling she and I have at least one long, serious discussion in store yet."

"More than likely," Jarod nodded, ready to move to a slightly more difficult topic. "But now, on to something far more serious — I need to know. Have you seen the newspaper today?"

"I haven't even had a chance to open it," the older man said as he shook his head. "I was just going to get to it when Deb came down wanting to talk about a new wrinkle to her nightmare problems. Why?"

"There's a story in there…" Jarod began, paused for a moment to search for better words and then realized there would be no easy way to break the news. "Oh hell, Sydney. There's no good way to tell you. Somebody has given an investigative reporter at the Post some information… about the Centre…" He saw Sydney's eyes widen. "…and the Pretender Project. The reporter has written an article that will probably raise quite a lot of questions now and create a fairly big stir eventually."

"No!" Sydney reached for the newspaper and opened it, and his eyes flew immediately to the picture of his foster daughter and the damning headline nearby. "Merciful Heavens, not now!"

"That's what Missy said — although as you can imagine, she was a little more explosive in her epithets and explicit as to what she'd like to do in response." Jarod's meager attempt at levity failed miserably — he hadn't really expected it to work. "I think we'd better assume that it's possible that everything is going to come out eventually…"

Chestnut eyes full of pain and guilt were raised. "If anything," Sydney said finally in a defeated tone, "it's a wonder that Raines and Lyle were able to keep things a secret for as long as they did." He folded the paper closed again. "Did the reporter list names?"

Jarod shook his head. "No — at least none other than mine and Missy's in this piece. But you can tell from the way he wrote the article that he's got a lot more information that is quite detailed." He looked at his former mentor in sympathy. "I'm afraid there's no way to tell when he's not going to start spilling some serious beans — and no way to tell what the consequences of that will be."

"Once my name is mentioned, my career will be over," Sydney shook his head. "Oh well — it won't be anything I don't deserve…"

"Stop that," Jarod barked. "From the looks of things, this reporter intends to make me into the injured party here. In that case, there's no way in hell that I'm going to let…"

"Jarod." Sydney's voice was soft, as was the hand that landed on the Pretender's arm. "Let it go. It's time for the truth to come out at last."

"Sydney, fully half of the truth is that all of the fault for anything unethical about the Pretender Project can be laid at the feet of William Raines and Lyle Parker. Missy's part was coerced, yours was too."

"The press won't care about that," Sydney shrugged. "What a wonderful conspiracy story can be written about this, a sordid tale about an evil think tank that steals the brightest and best children it can find and holds them as slaves to nefarious agendas. Not only that, but it kills and blackmails and defrauds with impunity, has senators and congressmen buying its product and law enforcement and justice officials bought and paid well to look the other way. I can just see it now — some enterprising scriptwriter turning it into a weekly TV series. A genius escapes the evil corporation that has held him prisoner, and every week he Pretends to be someone different to help the little guy — meanwhile the evil henchmen try every week to recapture him…"

"Don't be ridiculous — that's a pretty damn stupid and lame premise for a TV show, even for American TV nowadays. Look, Missy is going to have the Legal department look into whether or not there's any obvious libel or slander to pursue," Jarod pushed ahead. "But in the meanwhile, I think you and I need to start having our discussions to work out the rest of what we have left unsettled between us. If it's all going to come out, you and I need to settle things so that we stay on the same page."

"What good will that do?" Sydney asked him pointedly. "Our settling any differences that remain won't change the fact that I was most directly and continually responsible for your imprisonment and abuse."

"You had little or no choice in the matter, Sydney," Jarod reminded him sharply. "You were programmed and then lied to — and when that didn't work anymore, you were threatened and blackmailed."

"I could have reported it," the older man insisted softly.

"To whom?" Jarod demanded. "How could you be certain that the law enforcement officer you reported to wouldn't be in old man Parker's back pocket?"

"I should have tried harder…"

"You'd have been killed — or worse — and the results of THAT would have been disastrous for me, at least." Jarod shook his head. "But you know, if you were as deserving of punishment as you think you are, none of the things you did back then would bother you a bit now — except maybe that you're finally getting caught for them."

Sydney found it extremely difficult to even look into Jarod's eyes anymore. "I don't know how you can even stand to be around me," he said bitterly, "when I did to you as bad as or, in some cases, worse than they did to me in Dachau. I've never forgiven Herr Doktor Krieg for the horror he and his Nazi comrades visited upon my family and me. Now, looking back at the horror I visited upon you, I find I cannot forgive myself, nor understand how you could possibly begin to forgive me for what I was a part of doing to you." He drew a shaky breath. "Your mother has been a most gracious guest — but I understand her even less than I do you. I don't know how she can do anything but hate me for having stolen your childhood, from having had your company during that childhood that should have been spent with her."

Jarod gazed at his mentor for a long time. "I did hate you, in a way, for years after I finally escaped. I was rather pointed in the way I demonstrated it too."

"I never blamed you for that…"

The Pretender seemed not to hear. "I hated you until I started to understand what was done to you to force your hand. You were as much a victim as I was, Sydney — worse, because you were eventually forced to perpetuate the evil done to you by being the instrument of it being done to me. Once I understood that completely, I began to forgive. And now that I know you as more than just my keeper…"

Sydney looked down, nodding. The condemnation Jarod had mentioned was nothing more or less than he expected — really. "You know that I'll not dispute any revelation the newspaper makes about…"

"If you won't, I will," Jarod announced quietly, drawing Sydney's gaze back up to meet his. "If they're going to make me into a martyr, then it will be MY call who gets the blame and who doesn't in the end. If they want to blame Missy for being a part of the search team — then let them hear what was done to put her there and keep her there. If they want to blame you, then let them hear what was done to you from your early days as a Holocaust victim onwards. They may even want to go after Broots — and even he had good reason to fear non-cooperation."

"Jarod," Sydney breathed, concerned. "If the Triumvirate catches wind of this, and finds out that you're back…"

"If I'm out and going very, very public with my story, my sudden disappearance will cause a MAJOR stink," Jarod said confidently. "I'm not afraid of them anymore, Sydney — once this thing really breaks, they wouldn't dare touch me." He smiled grimly. "That's the risk when someone tries to out an uncomfortable truth — very often the WHOLE truth is a lot less comfortable for a lot more people."

"This still doesn't get me off the hook with my own conscience," Sydney informed him calmly. "I regret that I made you suffer and kept you at the Centre, and I'll continue to do so until the day I die."

Jarod moved and put his hand on Sydney's arm this time. "Listen to me. My parents may have given me my bloodlines and genetics, but you gave me most of values that I live by today. If you hadn't been there, mentoring me every day of my time at the Centre all those years, either I'd be the monster Raines always wanted me to be, or I'd be dead." He tightened his grip. "Or do you blame yourself for that too?"

"Jarod…"

Jarod shook his head. "You can't have it both ways, Sydney. Either you are damned both for keeping me and making me who and what I am today, or you aren't responsible for any of it."

Sydney frowned in frustration. Jarod wasn't listening to him. "What about all those SIMs…"

"What about them?"

"They caused you such agony…"

"Did they make you any less uncomfortable?"

"That's not the point…"

"Yes it is!" Jarod rose from his chair and paced the floor. "Tell me you walked away from those SIMs without feeling just as depleted and abused as I did."

Sydney stared at him for a long moment. "I can't," he said finally in a whisper.

"And that's why I can forgive — because you did nothing to me that you didn't ultimately do to yourself."

The older man continued to stare at his former protégé. "But I am a monster," he protested. "I should have known better…"

Jarod shook his head. "You had no reason to have learned that lesson, Sydney," he said gently. "Ultimately, your upbringing was flawed enough that knowing better came late to you."

"No, Jarod, I knew better even then," Sydney insisted softly, "and I can prove it." He grabbed up his crutch. "Stay here — I have something to show you." He slowly vanished into the den and then came back out again a few minutes later bearing a metal box. He put it down in front of the Pretender and then dropped heavily back into the chair again. "Open it," he directed with a voice made gravelly with emotion. "You'll see what I mean."

Jarod blinked at the old psychiatrist and then pulled the catch apart so that he could lift the lid and look inside. Startled, his gaze flicked up into that of his old mentor's, and then he was lifting from the box a slightly crumpled, hand-made Father's Day card that he had thought long since destroyed. He reached in again and brought out the origami figure of Odysseus that he'd folded just prior to his escape

"You see," Sydney said softly, "I did know better. I wanted so much to be able to show you that I did care — and I knew that if I did, that I'd lose you. I knew you needed to know that someone cared and believed, and I did nothing to be that person." He grimaced in memory. "I did worse than nothing — I deliberately tried to crush the feelings you had invested in me despite everything."

Jarod smoothed his hand against the card, straightening it just a little bit more, then opened it. How hard he'd worked on that picture of himself and Sydney — he could remember how he'd had to keep the project a secret from the prying cameras until the day came when he'd handed it over. He could also remember the empty feeling he'd had at the bottom of his stomach when Sydney had crumpled the card and tossed it in the trash and ordered him back to work. To find out now that the card had been retrieved and carefully saved for all these years…

"But tell me why you tried so hard to crush those feelings, Sydney," he demanded with soft vehemence.

"Because…" Sydney started and then tripped over the words. "Because I did care," he admitted at last in a voice that was anything but confident, "and I was afraid that showing it would mean you'd be taken from me. And," he looked up defiantly at Jarod, "because I wanted you to be able to walk — or run — away from the Centre without a single backward glance when the time came."

"So you're saying that you did indeed know better — better than to make me so emotionally dependent on you that I wouldn't run if I ever got the chance."

Sydney frowned. That wasn't quite what he'd intended to communicate but… "That too, I suppose…"

"And there's something wrong with that — wanting me to be able to get away cleanly if I ever got the chance because you knew that what you and I were involved in was wrong?" Jarod could finally see that he was beginning to make progress, but a glance at his watch told him that their time was rapidly coming to a close. "I want you to think about that for the rest of today — and not to worry about whatever that stupid damned newspaper article says. When the time comes, I'll put the story right myself."

Sydney blinked and shook his head. What Jarod was saying made sense — but it was a perspective that he'd never experienced before. "I'll think about what you said," he agreed, knowing it would take at LEAST a day to process the point of view enough to fully understand its implications.

"Then I'll let you get ready for your trip to Dover," Jarod let go of his mentor's arm and got to his feet. He carefully put the card back inside the box that had protected it obviously for years and closed the box. "Where do you keep this?"

"On the bookcase to the right of the television," Sydney directed, draining the now-cold coffee and reaching for his crutch again. Showing Jarod the contents of that secret cache had been a spontaneous action — he had both dreamed of and feared letting Jarod know of its existence since his former protégé had returned months ago. And Jarod had taken the revelation in stride — and then turned it into a message far different from the one Sydney had believed it contained all this time.

Jarod hefted the box and turned once more with it under his arm. "Will you think about what I said?"

"We'll talk about this again, I'm sure," Sydney hedged. "But yes, I'll consider what you said."

"Grandpa — I'm going to get the car out of the garage. Better put your shoes on…" Deb called from the living room. "We have ten minutes before we need to be gone."

"That's my cue," Sydney smiled at Jarod, almost grateful for the need to end the discussion. "She takes good care of me."

"You deserve it," Jarod replied pointedly and carried the metal box back into the den. His hand lingered on the box for a moment before leaving it in a spot that, from the looks of things, it had occupied for many years. A question that had always lingered in the back of his mind had been answered — Sydney had never NOT cared. If anything, that alone made Jarod more determined than ever to protect his foster father from what would surely come in a later newspaper article.

But how?

"David!" Detective Chuck Evans stretched back in his chair at his desk. "You're the last person I figured I'd be talking to today."

"Chuck, I have…" Lawler started.

"Quite an interesting article you wrote in the paper today, I must say," the balding detective commented, pushing the folded newspaper on his desk with a distracted finger. "I bet you can just smell that Pulitzer Prize in your future…"

"Chuck, this is about that," Lawler finally managed to sneak in a word sideways. "I need your help."

Evans pushed himself up to his desk. "My help?"

"Yeah. I just received a call from someone who has been… helping me with the story that goes with that article."

"So?"

"I want to know who I'm dealing with," Lawler stated flatly. "I have a funny feeling that something's just a little off, and I don't like being used."

The detective's eyebrows were climbing his forehead. "Phone records will need a court order, David," Evans informed his reporter friend, "you know that."

"And I know that there are ways around that," Lawler pressed. "I NEED to know, Chuck."

Evans thought for a moment and then sighed as he reached for a pen. "OK. What time was the call, and what number were you at when you received it?"

Lawler gave him all the pertinent information in a single breath. "When do you think…"

"A lot will depend on whether I'm in the good graces of the phone company today," the detective told him. "I'll call you when I have something."

"I'll be at work most of the day — or else on my cell. Lemme give you those numbers."

Evans noted down the numbers and underlined them. "I'll get back to you," he said and hung up the phone.

Lawler hung onto the receiver for a moment before pulling out a small spiral notebook and pen from his desk drawer and then dialing a new number. While he was waiting, he thought to himself, he might as well start working. It was time for him to start his own digging.

The bland operator's voice was soon on the line. "Directory Assistance. What city please?"

"Blue Cove. I'd like the number for Miss Melissa Parker."

"Hold on… I'm sorry, there's no listing under that name."

Lawler frowned and then shrugged. It seemed logical that the woman might have an unlisted phone number. "How about a number for Doctor Sydney Green?"

There was another pause. "I'm sorry sir, there's no listing under that name either."

"Damn," he whispered to himself. "What about Lazlo Broots?"

This time the voice on the end of the line after the pause was more informative. "The number you requested is 555…"

Lawler scribbled the number down with an expression of grim satisfaction. "Gotcha!"

Feedback, please:


	28. Answers Of A Sort

Resolutions – 28

Answers of a Sort

by MMB

Pete opened the door to the therapy room so Sydney could leave. "By the time I see you next week, I want you able to do a minimum of four sets of five each of those exercises — and you should have the CPM machine flexing the knee a minimum of seventy-five degrees. You're coming along well, but let's see if you can't step up the pace a bit now."

Sydney merely nodded at the athletic young therapist who had actually done a remarkable job at helping him get as mobile as he was in the three weeks since his surgery. He was tired — the exercises that Pete had taught him that session were painful and wearing and would be hard to discipline himself to do on the kind of basis that his therapist would be demanding. The last thing he'd expected, however, was to see Deb already back from her appointment, sitting in the waiting room outside the therapy room. She didn't look in the least happy, and his heart sank.

"See you next week," Pete boomed enthusiastically and then gestured with a grand wave at the slim young man sitting two seats away from Deb. "Jim! I'm ready for you now."

Sydney waited until Pete and Jim had vanished back behind a closed therapy room door before approaching his granddaughter. "From the look on your face and the way my leg feels right now, I'd say that we both deserve to sin a little." Deb merely nodded and rose to her feet. "There's a soft-serve ice cream machine downstairs in the cafeteria," Sydney offered, pointing the way toward the elevator. "I'm buying."

"OK." Deb's voice was flat, and she was obviously only barely holding back tears.

On the way to the elevator, Sydney caught sight of a small waiting room that was empty. "Hang on a moment — let's go in here." He directed. "I think we need to talk first before our treat."

Again Deb merely obeyed him without comment. He sat himself down on one of the molded plastic chairs and waited for Deb to sit down next to him. "I take it the news you got from your doctor was not what you wanted to hear," he observed carefully. Deb shook her head, her face falling just a little more. "Well?"

"Inconclusive," she reported in a defeated voice. "If I am pregnant, I'm not far enough along for any of the tests to say so."

Sydney nodded quietly. "What else did the doctor say?"

"He gave me a prescription for some pills, in case I wanted to take them…" She hesitated. "Because I haven't been… with Kevin… for that long, I could take these pills and they would force me to cycle. If I were pregnant, it wouldn't matter anymore." She leaned into her grandfather, suddenly in need of somebody else's strength. "Once I start my…" she paused, not entirely comfortable talking that frankly about her bodily processes with her grandfather, "After that, I can call him and he'll write out either a prescription for the pill, or I could choose to have him give me implants."

Sydney put his arm around her comfortingly. "Do you want to be pregnant, Deb?"

Slowly she shook her head. "Not really. I know I'm not ready, and I know Kevin isn't either."

"Then if you don't want to be pregnant, you do want to take the pills, don't you?"

She looked up into his face. Somehow, he'd managed to wave away the fog of emotional confusion and help her find her path. "I guess I do." She closed her eyes and leaned against him a little more.

Sydney could tell there was more to this for her. "What would happen if you waited?"

"I could be pregnant, but by the time I knew, it would be too late to take pills like that. Kevin is dead set opposed to my having an abortion — and I really don't want to think about it either, to be honest." She sighed as Sydney's arms tightened around her. "I guess not knowing whether I am or not and just taking the pills would be best — Kevin doesn't have to know that part of it."

"No, you should consider sharing that with him, ma petite. He deserves to understand the choice being made, and how it makes you feel. He's in this with you too, you know," Sydney counseled gently. "But ultimately, the choice is yours."

"If I get the prescription filled on the way home, I can take the first pill before we even get there," she decided. "Can we do that?"

"Of course we can," he reassured her. "And granted that you're going to be taking the pills and so should think of yourself as not pregnant and now on birth control, you can be with Kevin again." He ran a gentle hand down her back soothingly. "Everything's going to be OK, cheri."

"I just…"

He'd expected this, from the way her expression hadn't been exactly thrilled. "You just what?"

"I kinda… was… a little disappointed…"

"Disappointed how? That you weren't pregnant, or that the tests would be inconclusive."

Deb sniffed. "Both, I suppose. I've had long enough to almost get myself talked into the idea of a baby…"

"You could always not take the pill…"

She shook her head against his chest. "No, I know that it would be better this way for everyone concerned. But you know what I mean?"

"No," he answered honestly, "but then, I'm not a woman. When things calm down again a little bit, you should probably have another heart to heart with Miss Parker."

Deb thought about it for a while and then nodded. "I will."

"Are you OK?" he asked gently.

She pressed herself into him just a little harder again. She was glad to have had someone supportive to talk to after her unsatisfactory appointment — someone to help her think things through more clearly. Grandpa had always had a knack for helping her in that way. "I suppose…"

"Then come on," he urged with a gentle hug. "Let's go have some ice cream."

She pushed herself out of her grandfather's embrace and looked up at him sheepishly. "We really don't need it, you know…"

He smiled conspiratorially at her. "I know — but if you won't say anything about it, neither will I."

Finally she started to smile a little, and then shook her head. "My own grandfather's a sweet sneak."

"Contributing to the delinquency of a relative is a time-honored Green family trait," Sydney quipped, and then had the joy of seeing that beginning smile of hers grow just a bit wider. "Especially when it helps a favorite granddaughter of mine out of the dumps."

"I love you, Grandpa," Deb said, standing and handing him his crutches.

"I love you too, ma petite," Sydney grunted as he pulled himself to his feet with some difficulty, already a little stiff from the exercises Pete had taught him. "And am I glad you're the one driving home…"

Miss Parker sat behind her desk, attentively watching the faces of the two lawyers who had responded to her call for advice as they pored over the newspaper article together. Mei-Chiang had outdone herself in acquiring three copies of the paper for her boss, evidently knowing ahead of time of the need to be able to share the paper with others. Now it was a question of whether or not there was anything in the article that was actionable…

"Well," she finally asked, her patience starting wear thin.

The older of the pair, Lou Handel, looked up at her with pale blue eyes beneath a limp swatch of thin, grey hair. "Well, this is a very carefully worded article. There are no actual accusations made here, just questions asked. There's not a lot you can do against those who simply ask the questions — it's when they try to supply answers that don't exactly fit reality that the openings for law suits happen."

"You mean I have to sit here and say nothing about this?"

"How you want to respond depends very much on how you want the public to see the Centre, ma'am," Mark Enos, the younger legal expert, replied before his older and more circumspect associate could even open his mouth. "If you want to set the record straight, you give the guy that wrote this an interview in which you essentially say 'yeah — so?' and then get your side of the story out there."

"Do you honestly think, after all you know about the Centre's legal dealings, that I'll be able to gloss over what Raines and Lyle did?" Miss Parker knew full well that Handel at least had been with the Centre for years — hired by Raines to keep lawsuits to a minimum — and that Enos had only been with the company for a couple of years at best.

"You have to admit, there is a kind of wisdom in that response, ma'am," the older lawyer responded more thoughtfully. "So many of the allegations made here concern those who are no longer with us. And of those questions that have some basis in fact, most of them took place a very long time ago."

The intercom chose that moment to buzz. "I thought I said that I didn't want to be disturbed," Miss Parker snapped into the device.

"You did, ma'am, but Jarod is here — and I figured that considering everything, you might want him to take part in your discussion?" Mei-Chiang defended her choice to disrupt the meeting.

"You figured correctly," Miss Parker responded, the disgruntled tone now notably missing. "Send him in. And Mei — accept my apology?"

"Not a problem," Mei-Chiang smiled and nodded at the tall Pretender to tell him that he was welcome to proceed to the inner office. "I understand."

Miss Parker smiled and the two lawyers turned in surprise as the door to the office opened and a tall, dark stranger walked into the room. "Gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to Jarod Russell — the erstwhile subject of the newspaper article we're discussing and my fiancé."

"I see I'm just in time," Jarod commented with a satisfied grin as he shook hands with both men. "Please, continue."

Miss Parker waited for him to pull a third chair from against the wall and join the lawyers in front of her desk. "Mr. Handel and Mr. Enos here were explaining to me why I should do an interview with Mr. Lawler, essentially confirming many of the insinuations in the article and telling my side of the story."

Jarod's eyebrows rose slightly, but he nodded. "That's one approach. For one thing, it prevents you personally from looking as if you are hiding anything, which short-circuits one of the biggest potential problems. For another, it gets an alternative explanation out there BEFORE this Mr. Lawler is able to do much more muckraking at Centre expense."

Handel hadn't lost his wide-eyed surprise. "You're telling me that THIS," he pointed to Jarod, "is the Pretender Jarod that Mr. Raines and Mr. Lyle were looking for all those years ago — and the one about whom Lawler is writing here?"

"Yes." Miss Parker's admission was unequivocal. "Is that a problem?"

Enos was grinning madly at his associate, his dark eyes dancing merrily. "Quite to the contrary, Miss Parker. This works out wonderfully!"

"How so?"

"Because, as the supposedly injured party, what I have to say about the matter will be given far more weight than anticipated," Jarod answered for the legal team. "Whoever got this thing started probably thinks that either I'm dead or so far faded off into the distance that I either won't notice or couldn't be bothered — or that I'll jump at the first chance to get revenge." He smiled grimly. "They're right that I'll jump at the first chance I get — but they misjudged exactly what I'll jump at the first chance to say."

"But how far do we go into airing the Centre's former dirty laundry?" Miss Parker asked, both pleased that Jarod was jumping right into the situation with both feet and appalled at the potential damage doing so might cause. "I mean, it would be NICE if we all still had jobs when this is all over…"

"Miss Parker is right — we could be looking at hundreds of lawsuits if we come completely clean about the way research subjects were acquired for some of the more… classified… projects," Handel pointed out. "Not the least of which will be the families of those poor souls that Raines misused and abused and left warehoused down in the Psychiatric sub-level…"

Jarod shook his head. "I don't know how the current administration could be held criminally liable for actions taken under a previous administration that have since ceased. Nearly everyone who works here knows what kind of cloud we all came to work under — fear of what might happen to us or to our families if we ran afoul of Raines' temper." He looked Miss Parker directly in the eyes. "I'm all for putting all of it out — and doing it ourselves, before someone else does it for us in a way that will hurt us rather than set the record straight."

"Can we do all that in a simple interview?" Miss Parker asked, sitting back and listening closely.

"No," Jarod told her firmly, "but the interview will be our first return shot at whoever decided to sic Lawler on us. We give him access to everything — and let him draw his own conclusions. You've cleaned house, Miss Parker. You've cut all ties to organized crime, put an end to all questionable government contracts. You've expended a great deal of Centre capital to try to put the Centre back in a position of genuine legitimacy. That story — and what it's cost in both dollar and human terms, needs to be told."

"I don't know if we need to be quite THAT frank and up-front," Handel complained. "I'm all for the interview — but other than directly answering any questions this Lawler fellow has, and backing up our answers with more than sufficient documentation to demonstrate the truth of our assertions and possibly giving him access to you, Mr. Russell, I'd say let sleeping dogs lie."

"I think I like the more conservative approach myself, Miss Parker," Enos agreed with his colleague. "I think that what Mr. Russell…"

"Doctor Russell," Jarod corrected the man firmly after the second time.

"Excuse me," Enos apologized sincerely. "I think what Dr. Russell suggests should be a last-ditch response, in case we end up on the firing line of something more dangerous than the inside front page of the Post."

"But you're still telling me that there's nothing actionable in what was published today?" Miss Parker asked, wanting to clarify that point once more.

All three men in front of her desk began shaking their heads. "Asking questions isn't against the law," Handel repeated.

Miss Parker rose. "Mr. Handel, Mr. Enos — thank you for your time. Consider yourselves assigned to keeping an eye on the media — all outlets, from TV to radio to print. All we need is some crackpot spewing thoroughly bogus crap to get us in over our heads."

"Yes, ma'am," Enos replied as the three men rose. "Thank you, Miss Parker."

Miss Parker waited until the lawyers were gone before sitting back down and leaning her chin in her hand as she stared at Jarod. "What do you think?"

"Playing it close to the vest and only answering the questions posed to you has its advantages," he had to admit. "The danger, however, is that by not exposing your faults yourself, you could be accused of obfuscation." He resumed his seat and gazed back. "But, ultimately, that's your decision."

She reached out with her left hand and set the perpetual motion toy on her desk to clacking back and forth absently. "How's Sydney doing? Did you tell him?"

Jarod sat back. "Yeah, I told him, and he's handling it as best he can right now, I suppose. But he and I are going to have to dig through that quagmire of guilt he's dug around himself before his name ends up being mentioned by anyone. That's part of the reason I'm all for going on the offensive with this — not by protesting an innocence that simply doesn't exist, but by putting the whole story out. It's the only way to protect people like Broots and Sydney, who don't deserve to be damned along with Raines and Lyle and Mr. Parker."

She sat, watching the toy slowly lose its momentum until the little silver balls were no longer moving, and then finally she reached out for the intercom button. "Mei? I need the telephone number for the Post, and the extension for David Lawler." Her grey eyes came up and met Jarod's. "It's gotta be done."

"I agree," he nodded and rose. "I figure that as long as I'm here, I might was well go to check in at Sydney's office and see what all has changed in the years I've been gone. I'll be back after a while."

"Don't stray too far away," she warned impulsively. "I need your mind at work for me today, Jarod." She looked at him with pure gratitude. "I'm so damned glad you're home again…"

He stepped around the desk and bent to kiss her cheek. "If you need me, I'll be in Sydney's office. The phones down there work again, don't they? I can be back up here in just a few minutes if you need me…"

Canfield had to keep himself brutally disciplined to prevent himself from looking all around the limousine to see if he could spot the listening post the FBI had set up to tape his upcoming meeting. "C'mon, George, get in. We don't have all day," Burns growled anxiously, making the young Montana Senator take a deep breath and then duck his head to enter the vehicle.

He had obviously been the last stop on the pick-up run — Burns and Jackson were already in place. "Go!" Burns commanded through the Plexiglas window and then pulled it shut so that they could have some privacy. "Nice going, Tom," the Florida Senator then added with a pat to the back of his Vermont colleague. "I saw the piece in the Post this morning — with any luck, that should get things rolling nicely."

Jackson was visibly preening. "I talked to the reporter this morning – and even though the guy was still begging me for more documentation and information, I told him that he's essentially on his own from now on. It's time for the information to come from his own research, and not from my personal archives."

Burns turned to Canfield in excitement. "Did you see the article, George?"

"I saw it," Canfield answered with probably less enthusiasm than his colleagues were expecting. "It was pretty general – nothing that would get people tied up into knots."

"I didn't have any control over how the article was written," Jackson reminded the younger man sharply. "I only sent in the copies of Centre documentation that I'd received over the years, so that he'd know what the Centre had been up to for all this time. And ultimately, I'm of the opinion that my reporter did the right thing – it will be very hard for Miss Parker to respond legally to an article that only asks questions."

"What I'm waiting for," Burns piped up, "is for the Armed Services Committee to begin to wonder just what kind of organization it's been working with all these years. If we can lose her all of the good will of the government…"

"What are you wanting?" Canfield asked pointedly, "a Senate hearing on whether or not the Centre is a security risk for sensitive projects?"

"Actually, that's not a bad idea," Jackson replied, pointing a satisfied finger in the Montana Senator's direction. "What we WANT is for Miss Parker to pay for canceling all the projects that we had in the pipeline. If we accomplish that by destroying her credibility with the government as a whole…"

"Stiller's been transferred to the stockade in Baltimore," Burns announced rather precipitously. "One of my contacts in the Air Force that DIDN'T get caught in the dragnet the military just used called me this morning. They say that he's spending a lot of time talking to an investigator at the Pentagon – a Colonel Fox…"

"He wouldn't spill, would he?" Jackson asked in concern.

"If they offer him a deal for his testimony, we have nothing in place anymore to prevent him from talking," Burns replied darkly. "Harris and Curtis were the ones keeping him in check – promising him that if he kept his mouth shut, things would be taken care of. With them in the pressure cooker too now…"

"Can your contact get at Stiller?" Jackson asked suddenly.

Burns nodded. "More than likely. Why?"

"Because we don't need Stiller talking to anybody," Jackson announced with grim intent. "He's become the kind of liability that we simply don't need right now."

"What are you talking about?" Canfield couldn't keep from asking.

"I think it's pretty obvious what needs to be done," Jackson shot a frown at his younger colleague. "Have your contact put things into motion to shut Stiller up – permanently."

"Now wait a minute," Canfield protested. "You're talking about killing a man."

"Do you want to go to prison?" Burns demanded sharply. "Is that your idea of a good career move?"

"I don't think conspiracy to commit murder is a great career move either," Canfield shot back, stung. "I sure as hell didn't sign into this group of super-patriots just to end up promoting the deliberate murder of those who are inconveniences."

"What do you suggest we do about Stiller then?" Jackson retorted. "Sooner or later, Stiller will utter one of OUR names, and then…"

"Why would he do that if he were made aware that all of the promises that Curtis and Harris were making are still in place – and that there are serious consequences in the offing if he spills?" Canfield frowned. "What is it that Harris or Curtis have over him that we don't?"

"Rank," Jackson spat, leaning forward with a forefinger poking in his direction.

"Bullshit." Canfield was unimpressed.

"No shit." Burns interrupted. "There's a distinct line between military and civilian authority. Harris and Curtis could keep him in line with a threat of loss of rank, poor performance reviews, and all kinds of retaliatory actions that you or I, as mere civilian legislators, couldn't even begin to threaten. We have nobody left in the military of sufficient rank to make any threats that we might make stick."

"Our only recourse is to remove him as a problem," Jackson announced in a firm tone. He looked over at Burns. "Get a hold of your contact – be careful, I think we're still under surveillance, so you'll want to get at least one if not two disposable cell phones for this – and get Stiller taken care of."

"And what do we do about the newspaper article then?" Canfield looked from one colleague to the other.

"We wait and see what my reporter comes up with next – but in the interim, we can put bugs in the ears of some of our other esteemed colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee about how we're coming to have questions about dealings with the Centre. Maybe we can incidentally suggest that a hearing might be in order to demand that Miss Parker account for all of these issues publicly." Jackson rubbed his hands together. "The absolute last place that she's going to want to air her organization's dirty laundry is in public – her stock prices will drop right along with her reputation."

"So," Burns leaned back against the comfortably cushioned seat. "We sit tight on the newspaper stuff and quietly begin to work toward demand for a hearing – and I get our potential leak plugged permanently." He looked at his colleagues. "Anything else?"

Canfield shook his head. "That's enough," he breathed out.

Burns tapped on the Plexiglas window and opened it to address the chauffeur. "Let's head back," he ordered brusquely and closed the window again. "We're all scheduled to be at the full session this afternoon…"

"I have a caucus to attend," Jackson shook his head. "How about you, George?"

"I have afternoon meetings," Canfield replied. "I'll try to make the caucus, but I can't promise anything."

The limousine pulled to the curb in front of the office building where Canfield had climbed into the vehicle only a little while earlier. "See you later, then, George," Jackson said as the chauffeur opened the door. The Montana Senator climbed from the vehicle and headed back inside the office building without a backward glance.

"George must be off his feed," Burns commented thoughtfully. "He's not normally quite so squeamish when we talk of necessary actions."

"I think I'm going to take the first opportunity to talk to him privately," Jackson replied. "Something's eating him – and better we know it now, before we regret it."

Miss Parker pushed her salad away and crumpled the paper napkin that had lain in her lap to wipe at her mouth. "I'm really not that hungry," she explained to her companion. "This whole thing has given my ulcer a swift kick in the pants."

"I told you not to get yourself so upset," Jarod reminded her sympathetically. "I'll have to stop by the market on the way home tonight and pick you up some mint tea – guaranteed to help settle a touchy tummy."

She stared down at the slip of paper that Mei-Chiang had delivered to her desk about an hour earlier – with the telephone number for the Post along with the extension for David Lawler's desk AND Lawler's home phone number – and sighed. "I really don't want to talk to this asshole."

"We NEED this asshole, Missy," Jarod reminded her. "We want to come out of this in a better position than we started from – and Lawler's our ticket to that."

Miss Parker squinched her eyes closed and dragged her hair back away from her face, and then impulsively reached out for the telephone receiver and punched in the number for the newspaper. She opened her eyes again to focus on Jarod and give a deep sigh as she waited for the call to be answered at the main switchboard, then punched in the extension when directed to do so.

"David Lawler," a tenor-ranged voice answered in a tone of impatience.

"Mr. Lawler," Miss Parker began with far less frustration than she was feeling at the moment, "my name is Melissa Parker. I'm the Chairman of the Centre – and the Post published a very interesting article you wrote about me and my firm this morning."

There was a silence from the other end of the line – and Miss Parker grinned maliciously, realizing that she'd probably surprised the hell out of the reporter. "Miss Parker," Lawler responded finally. "This IS a surprise, I suppose."

"Kindly don't take me for a fool, Mr. Lawler," Miss Parker let some of her indignation slip into her voice. "You knew damned well that you'd get my attention by publishing that article – and that you'd at the very least get a call from someone…"

"Very true," Lawler acknowledged, "but I had no expectation of speaking with you directly. Frankly, this call saves me a helluva lot of work trying to get a hold of YOU."

"I figured as much."

"So," Lawler said, the receiver propped with a shoulder while he opened a fresh word processor file, "do you have a response for me?"

"I have something much better for you," she replied evenly, keeping her eye on Jarod and seeing him nod in support of her tack. "I'm offering you an interview – one-on-one, no holds barred. You have questions, I'll give you the answers you want."

"You're kidding!" This Lawler had NOT expected.

"I'm far too busy a person to kid about something like that," she snapped. "How soon can you be in Delaware?"

Lawler had already closed out the program and was logging off his terminal completely. "Give me three hours…" He did the math roughly in his head. Under normal circumstances, granted that traffic out of town moved smoothly, it would take two hours to reach Dover. Blue Cove, the little town the Centre had located itself in, was a half-hour's drive south of there. That gave him a half-hour's grace for either traffic jams or getting lost.

"Very well," Miss Parker announced. "I will expect you coming through the front doors of the Centre at four o'clock sharp. Please don't be late – I'm rearranging my entire afternoon schedule to make room for you."

"I won't," Lawler promised. "I'm on my way out the door here already."

"Until four o'clock, then," Miss Parker said and disconnected the call. She looked up at Jarod. "He's on his way."

"Excellent," the Pretender smiled encouragingly. "You sure you want to do this one-on-one?"

"If I have you or a legal team in the room, it will destroy the kind of intimacy I want to create with this asshole," she told him, reaching for her small bottle of water and taking a deep drink. "I want him to feel comfortable – but I want Mei standing by to bring me whatever I might need to document anything I tell him."

"You want me listening in?"

She nodded. "Absolutely. And I want the cameras ready to focus on anything the man might write down in his notes. If he makes a question mark, I want to know about it BEFORE he writes another article that requires another lengthy interview to answer new questions."

"I'll call Sydney then, and tell him that he might need to let Mom know that we may not be home in time for supper tonight." Jarod rose. "You also might want to have Broots logged into the mainframe with the inter-office IM client up – in case what needs to be retrieved are things buried where only he knows where to get at them. I can IM him what you need, and he can IM me for file location so I can print up a copy and get it to Mei to get to you."

"We might as well tell Syd what we plan too," she told him with a sigh. "Maybe that will settle his mind a bit more."

"AND you may want to notify Kevin – there's a chance that you'll need him sorting through some of those remaining archive boxes for information that he and Syd haven't gone through yet. In that case, you can promise Lawler copies of any documents that aren't in the mainframe by courier in the morning, so that he can have everything he needs."

"What if this backfires, Jarod?" she asked suddenly, feeling the pressure beginning to build in the pit of her stomach. "What if answering all his questions just leaves him with that many more questions about things we really DON'T want him getting into?"

"Don't borrow trouble, Missy. When the whole story is told, you know that it will vindicate you and anybody still left." Jarod smiled at her encouragingly. "If it means we have to tell the whole, sordid story, then that's what we'll do. At that point, you'll have me in your corner, giving the kind of testimony that will blow everybody away. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but still consider it enough of a possibility so that it doesn't upset you too much if we need to go to that length."

"I hate this."

"I know," Jarod soothed. "We'll get through it, though – and this time, we'll get through it together. Once we finish THIS, things will finally be completely over – and we can get on with making a life together without even the slightest shadow of a cloud over our heads. The Centre will be legit, operating completely out in the open – all the demons will be at rest – and we can have some resolution."

Miss Parker nodded and sighed. That, it seemed, was the only redeeming thing about the whole situation – that she didn't have to face everything alone anymore. Jarod was her secret weapon and her strength.

"Hi there!" Kevin greeted Deb as she opened the garage door to the kitchen for Sydney. "What did the doctor say?"

"Hang on – let's get Grandpa settled on his couch again – I'll tell you in a bit," she replied, keeping an eagle eye on Sydney as he made his way a little more slowly than usual from the car into the house. "Pete worked him pretty hard today."

"I can take care of myself," Sydney told her as he made the small step up into the house. "No doubt Kevin's been sitting here on pins and needles while we've been gone – you need to talk to him now, cheri. Go on."

Just a glance into determined chestnut eyes told Deb that Sydney was more than ready to turn quite stubborn on her. He waited and waved her on toward the living room and Kevin. "Go on," he directed again. "I know the way to the den." Then, just to show her that he meant what he said, he proceeded in that direction without waiting for her to move.

"Well?" Kevin asked again a little more insistently.

Deb extended her hand to him. "Come – sit down with me for a bit."

Kevin put his hand in hers, but with a slight frown of confusion. "Isn't this a yes-no question? Either you are or you aren't, right?"

"It isn't quite as easy as that," she replied, pulling him down next to her on the couch. "The doctor told me that, considering when you and I were together, it's too soon to tell whether I am or not."

"So we have to wait a while yet?"

She shook her head. "No. He gave me a prescription for some pills, Kevin – one that will make me have my cycle early. If I am pregnant, it won't matter – I'll never know one way or the other."

Kevin looked at her in complete confusion. "Don't you WANT to know?"

Deb looked down at where their hands remained clasped with fingers intertwined. "In a way I do – but there's another part of me that knows that I'm really not ready to be a mother, anymore than you're ready to be a father yet."

"So we'll never know." He traced the pattern of their fingers with his other hand.

"All we'll know is that we won't have a baby," she said softly. "I think this is the better way."

He gazed at her, his heart in his blue eyes. "Is this what you want?"

She leaned forward and put her free hand around his neck. "This is the best for both of us, Kevin. We'll have children someday – just not now."

"Promise?"

She smiled up into his face. "You're the only one I'd want to father my children, Kevin. I love you. Of course I promise."

"I love you," he whispered and moved to capture her lips with his.

Hands that were once clasped loosened so that the hands could reach out and embrace. Deb relaxed into Kevin's arms, grateful that she wouldn't have to feel obliged to pull away again. She needed him – he was her first line of defense against the nightmares and the most important person in her life.

Kevin gathered Deb as close as he could and buried his nose in the thick, blonde hair near her ear. "I just want you to be happy," he told her softly.

"I am, Kevin," she responded. "I am." She lay contentedly against his shoulder and wondered, very privately, if what she was doing was right. She had taken her first pill at the drugstore in Dover, as she had intended. No matter what the situation had been before then, she was no longer pregnant. The doctor had told her that once the regimen of medication was started, there would be no going back and changing her mind. But safe within the circle of Kevin's arms, she allowed herself to wonder.

Canfield looked up in real surprise as the door to his office opened and Tom Jackson stepped in. "Tom! I thought you were attending caucuses this afternoon."

"I'm between meetings," Jackson told him easily. "I noticed you were looking a bit uncomfortable in the car this noon – I thought I'd see if anything were wrong."

Canfield's mouth dropped open slightly. So his nervousness HAD shown! He had best play the next few minutes very close to the vest, or risk giving everything away. "I… It's just that we've never openly discussed being the prime movers behind anything like what we were discussing," he answered after a moment to think.

"But you were aware that there has always been the possibility that it could come to that," Jackson insisted, "didn't you?"

Canfield decided to play it honestly and shook his head. "Until now, we've had Curtis and Harris running interference for us and you know it," he blurted out to his colleague. "It was one thing to say, 'solve the problem' – and quite another to become directly involved in conspiracy to commit murder!"

"Hshhhhh!" Jackson hissed at him with a finger to his lips. "You don't need to go blabbing it up and down the hallways here." He stepped forward and leaned on Canfield's desk. "These things happen. We're in cover-our-asses mode anyway – you know that – and I don't know about you, but I'll do whatever it takes to make sure I don't end up holding the short end of the stick."

"There has to be another way!"

Jackson cocked an eyebrow at him. "And if there isn't?"

Canfield sagged into his comfortable and leather-covered chair and put his chin in his hand. "When I was recruited for this, I was told that I would be doing good things for my country – things that other people would be too politically correct or philosophically wimpy to carry out."

"That's right," Jackson nodded. "And sometimes, those good things you were told about include things that ordinary society would frown at – like the elimination of a liability."

"We're talking about a man's life!"

"We're talking about OUR lives, damn it!" Jackson shot back. "If it came down to a question of him or you, just who the hell would you pick, George?" The dark eyes narrowed as he watched his younger colleague. "Well?"

"It isn't a question of life or death for us, Tom," Canfield argued back.

"Like hell it isn't," Jackson stated sourly. "Do you honestly think this is the first time we've had to make this kind of decision?" He nodded at Canfield's shocked stare. "The reason that Harry Burns' constituency never heard about the testing of environmental agents in the backwaters was because certain environmental activists were taken care of in the same way that Stiller will be."

"My God!" Canfield stared at his Senatorial colleague. "What have you done?"

"We've done what is necessary to protect our country, Canfield," Jackson bellowed unthinkingly, then lowered his voice to a more conversational tone. "We went outside the laws so that we could protect those laws from those who would destroy them." The dark eyes narrowed again. "The only question I have for you now is whether or not you're still with us."

Finally Canfield had something that he could answer with total honesty. "I really don't have much of a choice, do I?"

"No, you don't." Jackson rose to his full height. "You're in this up to your eyeballs, George. The last thing you want to do at this late date is grow either a backbone or a sense of ethics."

Canfield shook his head. "What I do or don't do won't matter," he commented wryly. "It's all falling apart now anyway. What we're doing is nothing more than a delaying action – smoke and mirrors to try to give you the room to escape the consequences of what you've been doing all these years."

"I'll tell you this one time only," Jackson said very quietly. "If – IF, that is – things are falling apart, then we will not be the only ones to fall. And what is more, you can bet your bottom dollar that YOU will fall just as far and just as hard as any of the rest of us."

"Do you honestly think I'm not fully aware of that?" Canfield sighed.

"I'm just making sure that you're fully aware of exactly what that means in practical terms," Jackson stated very matter-of-factly. "While we no longer have our military arm to assure compliance with everything we do, we still have contacts in the marketplace that would take very little effort to set in motion ensuring that nobody betrays the group and gets away with it scot-free."

Canfield looked at his colleague with the beginnings of anger in his gaze. "Are you threatening me, Tom?"

"No," Jackson said in a deceptively mild tone. "Just putting the truth where it needs to be." He walked toward the office door. "I hope I see you at the next caucus."

"Get out." Canfield's voice was flat and final. "Just… get out."

Jackson turned and shook a finger at him. "Just remember, you don't want to blow any whistles." Not knowing whether to be satisfied that he'd made his point or worried that he'd felt it necessary to make in the first place, Jackson stalked from the office.

Canfield stared at the now-closed door for a long moment before leaning forward and putting his face in his hands again. If only the FBI had heard THAT!

Gillespie stared at Berghoff as the sound of the shutting door came over the line and into both sets of headphones. "Can you believe that guy?" Gillespie asked as he pushed the button to stop the recording process.

"All I know is that we need to get Canfield into custody without delay," the Assistant Director replied, removing the headphones and setting them on the console. "We'll also need to see just exactly which environmentalist Jackson was referring to. This thing just seems to get bigger and more complicated every time we turn around."

"These guys – or at least this group – has been dirty for a long time," Gillespie agreed, tossing his own headphones aside. "So… What's next?"

"Call Canfield at his office before he has a chance to spook and bolt. Tell him we heard him being threatened, and that you'll be on your way to spend the rest of the day as his bodyguard."

Gillespie's face fell. "Guard duty? Boss…"

"Then, when his day is finished, I want him into FBI headquarters without even a stop to go to the can – is that understood?" Berghoff glared at his agent.

"Yes, sir," Gillespie nodded reluctantly. "You don't think they'd try anything today, do you?"

Berghoff shook his head. "I don't know that these people can be trusted any further than we can throw them by the tail – and I sure as hell don't want to take chances. Canfield's just got us our conspiracy case tied up with a pretty blue bow – we owe him a little security."

"So what are YOU going to be doing while I'm babysitting a Senator?" the agent asked acidly.

"Getting these tapes transcribed and to a judge," Berghoff answered firmly. "I'm hoping for arrest warrants before the day is finished."

"About friggin' time," Gillespie muttered to himself as he climbed out the back end of the panel truck and stalked in the direction of his bureau-assigned sedan. "It's about friggin' time!"

Jarod knocked on Miss Parker's door and then stuck his head around the corner. "It's ten minutes to four. I've got Broots sitting on stand-by on IM to do any mainframe delving we need of him, and I've got Kevin on IM too, waiting to see if there's anything he needs to dig out of the boxes he has left there. What I want you to do now is to give me a sound check, just to make sure that I can hear whatever goes on."

She waved at him and closed down the file filled with insurance contracts and closed her eyes. "Testing, one, two… Testing…" She ran her voice up and down volume and intensity-wise, so as to give Jarod the best idea of the variations he would need to work with.

The head that poked around the corner after the knock this time was Sam's. "You got a thumbs up from Jarod, Miss Parker," he announced. "But I thought I'd see if I could talk you into at least having a security guard in the office with you during your interview."

She looked at him knowingly. "You?"

"Yup." He gazed at her. "Having just one bodyguard in the room with you wouldn't that far out of line, you know…"

"And no doubt it would make you feel better, right?"

He smiled at her. "Yes, ma'am."

She smiled back. "Thank you, Sam. I hope you don't mind standing…"

"No, ma'am – standing will be just fine." Sam stifled the inner chuckle at the ease with which he'd talked her into something that he'd figured he was going to have to argue for. "I just thought that since this Lawler fellow was a stranger…"

"You don't have to explain yourself, Sam," Miss Parker told him gently. "I'm just glad that you're on MY side."

Sam glowed softly and moved to find his place at her left side facing into the office, where he'd be able to see everything that this reporter would be doing. There were going to be no surprises on his watch today, he promised himself firmly.

The intercom buzzed. "Miss Parker, I've just had a call from the lobby – Mr. Lawler is on his way through with Mr. Harrington as escort. I thought you'd want to know…"

"Thanks, Mei-Chiang. When he gets here, bring him on in." Miss Parker straightened the bodice of her suit and gave a quick glance in Sam's direction, grateful that she didn't have to face this man utterly alone. Jarod was only an office or two away, listening carefully, Mei was just outside the door, listening. But Sam's presence was the stabilizing influence of the moment.

"Yes, ma'am." Mei-Chiang locked the intercom button down in receive mode as instructed, knowing her boss was similarly locking her end of the device into send mode. Her almond-shaped eyes narrowed as she saw Harrington round the corner towering over the dark head of a thin and bespeckled young man. "Mr. Lawler, you are expected," she said formally, leading the way to the inner office door and opening it.

Miss Parker rose as the young man looked around him in surprise at the rather spartan décor of the office. "Mr. Lawler," she said patiently, waiting for him to finally give his attention to her and not to her furnishings.

Startled, he looked at her and gaped. The pictures didn't do her justice, he decided immediately. The Chairman of the Centre was breathtakingly beautiful in a mature kind of way, with the faintest of laugh lines marring the porcelain perfection of her face at the sides of her eyes. Her hair had a liberal sprinkling of silver strands amid the rich darkness, and she was impeccably dressed and coifed. "Miss Parker," he acknowledged lamely and belatedly, holding out his hand only to find her grip firm and dry. "Thank you for seeing me on such short notice." He gazed around himself once more as if not entirely sure he was in the right place, then waited for her to seat herself once more behind her plain wooden desk before following suit. He put the briefcase in which he'd stowed all the material given him by Whisper Man at his feet and continued to survey his surroundings.

"Is there a problem, Mr. Lawler?" she asked with studied calm.

"No, ma'am," he replied, returning to look at her. "I just never imagined that your office would be so…"

"Plain?" she finished for him with a twist of an eyebrow. "You'll find that most things having to do with the Centre don't exactly match expectations — and that very little is as it seems on the surface."

Lawler blinked at the obvious double and triple entendre of her simple phrasing and found himself next looking up into the face of the stoic man who stood behind Miss Parker and studying him as if he were a bug under a microscope. It gave him a most uncomfortable feeling to be so under inspection. "Uh… do you really think this is necessary?" Lawler asked, gesturing vaguely at the stern man and then reaching a hand for his notebook and pen in his jacket pocket, hoping the hand wasn't shaking enough to be visible.

"Sam Atlee is my Chief of Security," Miss Parker explained without apology. "Since the kidnap of my son, I have felt it necessary to step up my private and personal security precautions. I assure you that he is here only to vouchsafe my safety. He will neither interfere with our discussion, nor will he participate."

"Your son was kidnapped?" Lawler gaped and then began to write in his notebook. "How long ago was this?"

"A few weeks ago," she answered guardedly.

"Strange that there has been no mention of it in the news…"

"Publicizing it wouldn't have gotten my son back to me any faster," she bit off a little more quickly than she'd intended, and she took a deep breath. "The FBI was called in, and I was lucky. My son and the young lady who was taken with him were found still alive."

"Do you know who was responsible?" Lawler's pen hovered over the notebook expectantly.

"Certain elements of Centre authority left over from the previous administration were unhappy with the new direction I was taking the Centre after my elevation to the Chairmanship," she replied evenly, finally getting onto ground she wanted to cover. "They thought to pressure me to rethink my decisions by threatening my family." She looked directly at the reporter, and Lawler could feel the anger and betrayal that flowed from that intense gaze. "It didn't work."

"So you're saying that the kidnapping was the result of an inner power struggle?"

"Yes," she replied frankly, "one that seems to be continuing, only this time from people in positions of authority outside the Centre who profited greatly through the work the Centre had been willing to do for them."

"Oh really?" Lawler's tone told her that he had finally put up his wall of skepticism.

"Look," Miss Parker said, suddenly leaning forward over her desk. "You asked some very pointed questions in your article. Do you want the answers to those questions or no?"

Lawler leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs comfortably. "That IS why I'm here," he told her with a patently false smile.

"Is it?" Now it was Miss Parker's turn to demonstrate raw skepticism. "Do you want to know the truth — or are you only here to give some measure of credibility to a smear campaign that you've already committed yourself to?" Eyes the color of a hurricane pinned him to his seat. "If you've already made up your mind as to what you want to find here, then you're wasting my time and yours — and this interview can just end right here."

She paused for effect, and Lawler found it fully as effective as it had been intended to be. Suddenly he was asking himself, just what WAS it that he had come all the way out here to discover? Then, she seemed to relax a little. "If, however, you want to listen, I can tell you a story that will make your hair curl — and back up everything I tell you with documentation." She leaned back in her chair again. "IF you want the truth, that is. The call is yours, Mr. Lawler…"

Lawler's dark eyes stared into the blue-grey depths of Miss Parker's calm gaze. Hot damn, he thought to himself, this lady has brass ones as big as anybody's he'd ever met. She could dish out as well as take, and he liked that. "Naturally," he replied finally, "I'd want to hear the truth."

"Then ask your questions," she said calmly, smiling inwardly that she'd hopefully broken through the wall of skepticism that he'd thrown up and found an entry into a reporter's inquiring and open mind.

"OK," he said, throwing his notebook open to a fresh page, wondering if he'd be allowed to get back to the line of questioning that his attitude had blown out of the water. Certainly there was more story here than even Whisper Man had suggested. "Let's start with a project that I understand your organization had on going for a very long time: called the Pretender Project."

"What do you want to know about it?" she asked without a single visible or verbal flinch.

"Is it still ongoing?" Lawler served his first hardball.

"No," she replied, returning the volley easily. "The Pretender Project was officially shut down approximately seven years ago at the order of the Triumvirate, who at the time controlled the purse strings at the Centre. The Chairman at the time, a Mr. William Raines, did try to keep elements of the project on-going, an endeavor that eventually led to his dismissal as Chairman and my being appointed to his place."

"How many people were involved in this project, and what has become of them?" Lawler asked carefully, knowing the loaded nature of his question.

Miss Parker sighed. "Originally, there were eight children selected for their intelligence and mental acuity. Of them, only two of the original eight children still survive." Again her gaze pinned him to his seat. "I am one, and Jarod is the other."

"Y…you?" Lawler's jaw dropped. He dropped his notebook and pen to the chair next to him and reached for his briefcase to sort through the papers he knew almost by heart by now. "You must be…" He looked up at her in shock, for there had only been one girl's name in the list. "Melissa?"

She gave him a slight smile. "Very good. May I see the documents you have there, please?" She held out a hand.

Lawler debated for a moment then handed her over the list of original Pretender candidates. She gazed at it without showing the slightest sign of emotion or reaction, then blithely handed the list back to him. "Next question?" she asked.

"What do you know of the fate of the others?"

Miss Parker breathed out through her nose slowly. "All of them survived to adulthood. Damon was killed as he tried to assassinate the Swedish ambassador about ten years ago. Kyle was imprisoned for his crimes, escaped and was killed saving his brother. Eddy escaped when Jarod did and eventually became a law enforcement officer. Alex killed him eight years ago, then jumped into a sludge pond to avoid capture on multiple murder charges — including Eddy's — and has been presumed dead for about the same amount of time. Timmy was shot and killed here in the Centre a few months back, protecting a good friend of mine. And about the same time, Lyle was killed by the Yakuza for failing to provide promised results of a research project."

Lawler was writing furiously. "You say you can document this?"

Miss Parker didn't even blink. "Mei, get the files on the Pretender Project subjects and make a copy for Mr. Lawler." She pointed to the intercom on her desk. "I made arrangements for my secretary to listen in for just this purpose. Now, your next question?"

"You were a part of search to recapture Jarod when he escaped?"

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "If you didn't know to begin with that I was part of the search team, you wouldn't know to ask the question. Kindly don't take me for a fool."

"I'll take that as a 'yes,'" Lawler countered easily. "Did you know what he'd been forced to do all his life?"

"No." To Lawler's surprise, that question got more of a response than all of the others had. "I didn't know what he'd been through when I started," she told him as she rose from her seat. "I was brought back from Corporate, where I was working in Security, to help with the search because Jarod and I had been… friends… as kids. They were counting on my acquaintance to give the search team an advantage. As time went by, however, bits and pieces of his past started to come out."

"And still you chased him?"

"Yes." The answer was soft. "I had no choice."

"What about the others? This Doctor Green had been responsible for Jarod's being held prisoner…" the reporter began to argue.

"You don't know anything about why we did what we did," Miss Parker spat, spinning on her heel. "For his part, Sydney was… lied to, blackmailed, threatened… all to keep him working with Jarod. And once Jarod had escaped, Sydney aided him in all kinds of little ways that wouldn't get him killed or bumped from the search team. You leave Sydney alone — Broots too. On that I'm not negotiable."

"Mighty defensive of your work colleagues, aren't you?" Lawler observed.

"They're both good men," Miss Parker forced herself to sit down again. "Sydney especially has lost a great deal in the process. He doesn't deserve to be held responsible for what others forced him to do."

"Which others, Miss Parker?" Lawler wanted to know. "You keep talking as if this were an organized crime syndicate rather than a think tank."

"Until just a little while ago, that's EXACTLY what the Centre was," she told him frankly. "Between the enforcement arm of the Triumvirate and Mr. Raines, there was little the people at the top wouldn't do to get their way — and there was always enough money to either buy someone's silence or buy someone's services to silence a potential threat." She leaned on the desk. "And because there was a great deal of money to be had performing services for the more unsavory elements of global society, the Centre became very rich and very powerful — and used the ends to justify its means and protect its power base."

"And yet you put a stop to this?" The reporter crossed his arms. "All by yourself?"

"No, not by myself. I had help — and frankly, the Triumvirate made a big mistake appointing me Chairman, because my first act was to return all the investments that they had made and get them out of my hair. Then I severed ties with the crime syndicates the same way — by returning their money with interest — and then canceling contracts with certain factions of the government who hadn't gone through proper channels to get their projects approved."

"What about Jarod?"

Miss Parker sighed. "Eight years ago, Jarod sent a message to us telling us that he was done playing with us. That was, after all, what it had been to him — a game. He'd always had the ability to vanish without a trace. Well, one day he decided he'd had it, and he disappeared." She shrugged, hoping that he'd drop it. "After a significant amount of time, and the expenditure of a fairly large sum of money to pick up his trail again that was completely unsuccessful, the Triumvirate decided the Pretender Project was no longer financially feasible. They told Mr. Raines to shut it down — and he did, for the most part."

"For the most part?" Lawler was writing again.

"Mr. Raines never was one to play by the rules. He had found another Pretender candidate and chose to keep this one hidden from the Triumvirate. When I discovered this not long ago, I turned the information over to the Triumvirate, and they relieved Mr. Raines of his authority and eventually gave the job to me."

"Where is Mr. Raines now?"

"Dead." Miss Parker's voice was flat and firm. "He was killed by a sniper the day that the Tower was bombed — just moments before, as a matter of fact."

"And this other Pretender candidate?"

Miss Parker raised her eyes and looked at him unflinchingly. "He was released from the place where he'd been held and is now being mentored into mainstream life by those who care about him."

Lawler turned yet another page in his notebook. Miss Parker certainly was being open with him — IF everything she said could be proven. "And you say you have documentation on all of this?"

She shook her head and chuckled. "The documentation on the Pretender Project alone takes up a sizeable chunk of my mainframe computer's storage space, Mr. Lawler — and it is in no way complete. There are hardcopy archives that even now are being sorted through and re-entered in the mainframe to make up for the loss of our previous computer in the bomb blast. About the only thing that wasn't documented was Mr. Raines' demise — and that because he was killed just before our entire corporate headquarters was destroyed, and there wasn't time to document his death. So, to answer your question: yes, there is documentation for almost everything I just told you — either in our mainframe, in our hardcopy archives, or in the various news agency archives. How much of it you want — or have time to read — is up to you."

At that moment, Mei-Chiang came into the office and unobtrusively deposited a file folder on Miss Parker's desk which, after a quick study, Miss Parker handed over to the reporter. "Here are the documents you asked for about the fate of the other Pretender subjects."

She watched as the reporter stared at the folder in his hands and worked to comprehend everything that she'd told him so far. "I don't…" he started, then frowned to himself.

"What? Is there another question?"

Lawler by now had the distinct feeling that the documentation he'd been given, as complete as it had been in presenting a thoroughly sordid situation, had in no way pointed at Miss Parker herself as the villain. In fact, it had been decidedly lacking when it came to the motivations behind the actions. The vague feeling of having been used in some way was starting to become more acute when he thought of the way the speaker had harped on this woman's complicity in all of the events documented.

If Miss Parker were to be believed, no complicity had been voluntary — on her part or anybody else's. She was certainly not avoiding any of his questions, and had offered to document virtually anything that she told him. This was not the picture he'd expected to find. It was as if he'd just had blinders removed — and while the events documented in the original material still were truly horrible to contemplate, an easy assignation of responsibility was no longer possible. He looked up into interested and concerned blue-grey eyes from the other side of the desk. "No… yeah — but not so much a question as a problem."

Miss Parker leaned back in her chair. "How so?"

How much did he dare trust her? Certainly from the sounds of things, she would be quite familiar with the material that he'd been given — and probably not surprised at what he had in his possession. And certainly the Centre's sordid past history did deserve a possible exposé eventually — especially if there was enough government involvement in some of the unsavory projects to make such a story worthwhile. But if he was going to work on such a tale, working from the standpoint of knowing the whole truth and not just the part of it that someone with an agenda thought fit to give him would be the best recourse.

He took a deep breath, and then took one of the biggest risks of his journalistic career. "I want to show you something," he told her and lifted the open briefcase up onto the desk. Immediately, the massive Security Chief had stepped up and looked as if ready to push between Miss Parker and her desk to protect her. "It's just documents," Lawler explained and turned the open briefcase around so that both Centre employees could see. "See?"

Sam backed away the moment he saw that Lawler was telling the truth, although he shot the smaller man a withering glare for making such a precipitous move. Miss Parker carefully lifted the folders from the briefcase and opened them one by one, scanning the documents enclosed.

Finally she looked up at him. "Where did you get all this?" she asked. The amount of one-sided information in the folders was appalling in its nature and scope — without knowing the precise circumstances of any of this, no wonder Lawler's article had been so damning in its wording. No small wonder he'd had such a thick wall of skepticism at the beginning of their discussion.

"I had an informant pretty much dump it on me and tell me there was much more to the Chairman of the Centre than a pretty face," he told her simply. "And then I did a little research of my own that confirmed that there was at least a kernel of truth in there somewhere. For example, when I got on your website and entered Pretender Project into the search criteria — and got a request for a password rather than a 'not found' error message — I knew something was up. But now, talking to you…" He scratched at his head. "Whoever had this must have known…"

"Must have known the rest of it and deliberately held it back to make it look as damning as possible," Miss Parker finished for him, and she nodded. "And whoever had this must have been a trusted confidante of Mr. Raines, because even I haven't personally seen some of this material before."

"He told me that I had enough to go digging on my own without his help anymore," the reporter told her frankly. "And if you hadn't agreed to this interview, I have a feeling that most of what I would have found would have been just as damning without the other side of the story told."

"Who was he?" she asked quietly, "this person who gave you all of this?"

"I don't know," he replied with an apologetic shrug. "All I know is that the voice was nothing but a whisper — but I think it was a man's voice. Whoever it was, they were adamant about making trouble for you."

Miss Parker shot a glance up at Sam and found him no happier about this development than she was. She then leveled a serious glare at the reporter. "So… What are you going to do now?"

Lawler returned the frank look. "I'm not sure," he answered eventually, "but I think I'm going to want to think for a while before I write another article to follow up the one I've published already. I want to read the documentation that YOU can give me, so I can get a clearer idea of the whole picture — not just the agenda of a whisper on the phone. And I want to talk to some of the others mentioned here — Doctor Green, Mr. Broots…"

Miss Parker sat back in her chair and pondered. If he wanted to know the truth, and if SHE wanted him to know the truth so that he could put the truth out there in print, then he deserved to have his questions answered properly. "I'll talk to Sydney and Broots and try to convince them to talk to you — but I don't make promises. Both of them are recovering from injuries received lately, and they need peace and quiet to get better. I do, however, think I can offer you someone else to talk to that you'd probably appreciate even more."

"Oh?" Lawler raised his eyebrows at the idea that there might be another with whom he'd want to talk. "Who would that be?"

"Me."

The reporter spun around in his chair to look at the tall, dark-haired and handsome man who had come through the office door so quietly. "Who is this?" Lawler asked, turning back to Miss Parker, not failing to miss how the newcomer moved around the desk and now stood at the woman's right hand.

She grinned, and it was a cold expression. "David Lawler of the Post, meet Doctor Jarod Russell. You wanted to know about the Pretender Project, who better to talk to than the Pretender himself?"

Feedback, please:


	29. Necessary Discussions

Resolutions – 29

Necessary Discussions

by MMB

"Hi, Grandma! Hi, Sprite!" Davy greeted them as he let them into Sydney's front door. "I thought you'd have been here already."

"We stopped and had a fun time in the park," Margaret shook her head. "Sprite here wanted to play on the swings."

"Me 'wing high, Davy!" Ginger grinned happily at her brother. "You come 'wing with me?"

"Not yet. I still have some homework to do before I can goof off," Davy told her. "Why don't you go wait for me in the tree house, and I'll come get you when I'm done."

"Me go tree house, Gamma?" Ginger turned a beseeching face to her grandmother.

"Just be careful, sweetie," Margaret allowed, bending to kiss her granddaughter on the top of the head before letting go.

"OK…" the little girl chirped happily and headed for the kitchen arcadia doors that opened into the back yard.

"Where's your Grandpa, Davy?" Margaret asked curiously. She exchanged a smile with Kevin, who looked up from a laptop computer with a studious expression and then went right back to what he was doing.

Davy pointed. "In the den, with his leg in that thing that makes it move all the time." He led the way into the dining room, where his schoolbooks were spread across the table. "I gotta finish reading…"

"You go ahead, I can find my own way," Margaret patted her grandson on the shoulder as she passed by and walked into the kitchen. She left on a counter the sack she'd carried over her arm from a quick stop at the grocery store and then walked over to the door to the den. She knocked lightly on the doorjamb. "Sydney? Are you in the mood for a visitor?"

Sydney let the document he'd been reading droop. "Come on in," he invited warmly, replacing the document in its folder on the coffee table and closing it as the red and silver-haired woman moved into the room. "Make yourself comfortable. Would you like something to drink…"

"No…" she waved her hand. "I'm fine. Can I get YOU anything, though? You're kind of stuck…"

"I'm fine," he smiled at her and folded his reading glasses on top of the closed folder. "Where's Ginger?" he asked, looking toward the door into the kitchen.

"In the tree house, waiting for her brother to finish his homework," she replied easily as she took a seat in one of the comfortable chairs near the fireplace. "She loves it out there."

"I'm not surprised," Sydney answered. "I remember sitting up there myself not long after Broots and I built it for Davy. It's really very comfortable."

"Actually," Margaret leaned forward a little in her chair, "I've been looking forward to being able to talk to you at length privately."

He nodded slowly. "I've been expecting that," he replied with a little more care. "Missy told me you wanted to talk to me. I figured our exchange the other day was just a prelude."

"You realize that I hated you for a very long time?"

How much like Jarod she was with her tendency to come straight to the point without any preamble, Sydney thought to himself. "I'd have been very surprised if you hadn't," he replied with a wistful expression. "I'm even more surprised that you don't still hate me a little."

"I'm trying not to," she told him honestly. "You've been a very gracious host to me in my little time here."

"Maggie," he interrupted her gently, "it's OK. I am – or was – a part of a group of people who stole two of your children and kept you running and in hiding for the better part of your life. That isn't going to be something that you can set aside easily."

"But that's just it, isn't it?" she responded with a dramatic wave of her hand. "Your part in my sons' lives isn't quite as clear to me now as it was just a year ago."

Sympathetic chestnut eyes regarded her. "I wasn't a part of what happened to Kyle. I wish I could tell you that I tried to protect him too, but he was put outside my control from the very beginning. I only knew of him peripherally, when the time came to run experiments with him and Jarod jointly. I certainly had no idea the two were brothers."

"I know that," she replied. "Jarod told me about Kyle – he told me what Mr. Raines had done to him. I don't blame you for that."

Sydney nodded. "But you do blame me for what was done to Jarod," he guessed gently. "And my only possible response to that is that I blame myself as well – for all the good it will do either of us now."

She leaned her chin into her hand propped up on the arm of the easy chair. "You know, once I had Jarod back, and our family was together again, I thought that my life would be perfect. And for a while, I think I fooled myself into believing that all those years trapped in the Centre hadn't counted. But then I started to notice the little ways in which Charles and Jarod remained strangers to each other – little things that, if Jarod had grown up with his father in his life, would never have mattered so much."

"Maggie…" he began.

"No," she put up a defensive hand, "you need to know this. Even before Charles died, I knew that Jarod still had a connection to you that he'd never have with either of us — even though he never mentioned you or the time he'd spent with you. He didn't have to. You were the one who had raised him, and no amount of love or wishful thinking could change that. And whether or not you returned his affection, he still loved you as if you were his father — and his decision to come back here and find you when Charles died brought that home to me very clearly. He loved Charles, and he loved me — but a very important part of him loved you very much, and still does."

"Had the powers that be in the Centre known how attached Jarod had become to me," he replied when he could finally slip a word in edgewise, "they would have used that to manipulate and force him to do things he wouldn't normally have done. At worst, they would have taken Jarod away from me and given him to someone else – perhaps Mr. Raines."

"Did you love him, Sydney?" Margaret asked plaintively, "As you raised my son, did you love him?"

"Yes," he answered very softly. "I never said anything – never showed him that I cared to the extent that Jarod would have wanted me to and really needed me to, but yes. I loved him as a son. I still do."

"Then tell me about him," she asked then. "Tell me about my son as a young boy, as a young man… what was he like growing up? Of anyone, you WOULD know…"

The expression that came over the older man's face as he leaned back into his pillows told Margaret all she needed to know. Sydney's memories of Jarod had made his face grow soft and proud – just as Charles' face would do when they talked about their son's determination to create a new and safe life for them. Both men had loved her son deeply — of this there was no longer any doubt in her mind at all.

"Jarod was always very curious, very inquisitive, even when it wasn't in his own best interest," Sydney was saying, and Margaret forced her mind to follow what was being said. "His emotions were always so very close to the surface. He was a very sensitive and gentle person. He made friends easily, despite the limitations of his surroundings. He made friends with some of the sweepers, and all of the janitors adored him." He chuckled. "He and Miss Parker used to get themselves into all kinds of trouble for a while — getting into places that they weren't supposed to. The two of them and Angelo — they were quite the little band of mischief-makers." He shot her a quick glance. "I used to turn a blind eye to what they'd be up to as much as I could, maybe because I knew that Jarod needed a chance to BE a child, even if only very briefly and occasionally, as a break from everything else."

"What all did he have to go through?"

Sydney stared in shock and horror. "What?"

The brilliant blue eyes were half-filled with tears. "He would never tell me very much about what he went through as a child – what the Centre made him do. I want to know…"

The old psychiatrist was shaking his head firmly. "No good purpose would be served by it, Maggie," he told her gently. "But I can tell you that much of his work was involved in running what are known as SIMs. SIMs are simulations of people or events either in the past or theoretically in the future carried out with the intent of understanding motivations of players in past situations or anticipating actions or agendas that might come in the future to influence the way a situation would be resolved."

"How would he do that?" she wanted to know, and leaned forward to hear, finally, some of the information she'd been longing for, ever since her son had come home to her.

"You want to know process?" Sydney was astonished to see her nod vigorously, obviously listening very closely to him. "We would first go over all of the givens of the situation in question and then set the scene in motion, often using props or visual and audio effects that would enhance the environment of the room to match the situation in question. Jarod's gift was his ability to climb into the heads of the people involved in the situation as the action would be on going and predict with a high rate of accuracy what their response would be and why that response would be chosen over all the others. My job was to keep him focused on the situation at hand rather than distracted by some of the more trivial data necessary to make the simulation appear real to his mind."

"That doesn't sound so…" Margaret started, then fell silent as she saw the expression on the Belgian's face change again. "What?"

"Sometimes the SIM was very straightforward and practical. But sometimes the situation that Jarod had to put himself in was…" Sydney shook his head. "Some of it was horrific just on the surface – and far more so when dissected and run through a sensitive young man's mind. Sometimes the terror and emotional distress caused by the SIM could be enough that I'd have to do weeks of therapy just to get him back to some semblance of mental balance again. And how much time I was given to put him back together again generally depended upon just how keenly the Centre wanted him moving on to the next difficult SIM, and the next one after that…"

"Was he ever allowed to walk away from something that was just too awful to consider?" she asked in a shaky voice.

Sydney merely shook his head again sadly. "There were a few SIMs where I simply put my foot down and refused to let Jarod participate. My efforts didn't always work, however." The chestnut eyes were hooded and filled with guilt. "Advantage would be taken of my time away from the Centre – when I'd go on holiday or be sent off to attend a conference or seminar – and I'd come back to work afterwards to find Jarod a near basket case. Sometimes it was to run the SIMs that I had previously refused to let him take part in, and sometimes they would use him in… other experiments…"

"Oh God!" Margaret breathed, her hand to her mouth. "I knew it was bad, but I had no idea…"

"I am sure that the reason Jarod never spoke to you of these things is because he didn't want to upset you," he told her gently. "The most important thing to remember is that he survived those years with his mind and his soul intact – and that he finally escaped the Centre, found you and the rest of your family, and made a life for himself. And a good life, at that."

He was right, she thought to herself. Even though Jarod had been through something that no child should ever have been forced to go through, he HAD come out of it with his wits and integrity intact. Much of the credit for that belonged to the lame man half reclining on the couch in front of her. "May I ask you another question?" she asked finally after she managed to get her careening emotions back under control.

"Yes?"

"What did you think when Jarod escaped?"

Sydney allowed a small smile to turn the edges of his lips upwards. "I was pleased that he'd finally found a flaw in the security that he could exploit, to be honest. I was glad he had the personal strength of character to step out into a world he knew only very distantly and then keep one step ahead of anybody the Centre sent after him, all the while helping others along the way. I was proud of him, and I tried in my own way to help him whenever I could."

"And yet you chased him back and forth across the country…"

"My job," he corrected her carefully, "was to interpret any clues that Jarod left behind him and try to predict where we stood the best chance of catching up to him next." He allowed that small smile to widen slightly. "I usually managed to make my predictions either too late to do the Centre any good, or kept them just far enough away geographically that he could get away without too much effort. Those few times that we came close – or actually caught him – were times when he deliberately LET us get close."

"Why?"

Sydney blinked. "Why what?"

"Why did you do it?"

"Do what — mentor him as a young man or participate in the search for him later?"

"Any of it — all of it…" She looked at him earnestly. "I just want to understand what motivated you…"

He shook his head. "My motives don't matter…"

"They do to me," Margaret insisted.

Chestnut eyes full of guilt and self-loathing looked over at her. "I had no choice, or so I thought. I was lied to in the beginning – I was told that Jarod was an orphan – and I went along with it without questioning. I was a scientist, Jarod was a subject, and I didn't let myself think much further than that. Then, when I finally did start to question the wisdom of some of what I was being asked to have Jarod do, came the threats and outright attacks against me or those I cared about. In the end, I could see that the Centre was willing to sacrifice just about anything or anybody to force my hand with Jarod – and to protect others and ultimately Jarod himself, I capitulated." He rubbed his eyes tiredly and then pinched the bridge of his nose. "I will regret much of what I did in those days until the day I die."

Margaret relaxed back against the comfortable cushion of her chair for a long moment of silence. The assessment she'd made two days ago was a valid one — the arrogant, unfeeling scientist who would blithely put Jarod through decades of living hell that she'd always imagined Sydney to be had been only a figment of her imagination. He was just a man — a man who had made mistakes and yet done a good job raising her son. And he was an honest man who clearly understood the depths of his mistakes and regretted them deeply, as evidenced by that discussion she'd overheard and by the expression in his eyes just now. Moreover, during the last few days she had finally seen for herself the vestiges of the older role model in her working knowledge of her son's behavior patterns and could fully appreciate just how much of Sydney had been transplanted into the Jarod she'd come to love so dearly. And finally, she stirred herself. "Thank you."

Once more, Sydney blinked in surprise. "What on earth for?" he asked in amazement.

"For taking care of my son, for trying…" The brilliant cerulean shone at him. "For caring enough to try to keep him safe from the likes of Raines…" She smiled at him. "And for being honest with me just now — and not trying to humor me or put me off."

"I would never do that! You were violated as a parent in one of the most heinous ways imaginable — there are parts of your child's life that you'll never fully understand. I know…" His voice faded away. "I would never do that…"

"Jarod told me that you had a child stolen from you too," she told him with a soft voice, "that you'd know exactly what I'm feeling — what I have felt."

"Yes," he answered in a whisper.

"So I don't have to explain — you already have been where I am, and have felt what I've gone through."

His gaze sought hers, trying to see just what all she was trying to say. "Yes."

"Where IS your son?"

"In upstate New York," he answered, "with his wife. He teaches at a small college there."

"Does he come to visit you? Are you close?" Margaret's voice had grown soft.

"He comes… occasionally. But no, we're not close." Sydney shrugged. "His mother married another man who then raised him as his own — for Nicholas, that man will always be his father. I'm grateful that we're at least friends and I've learned not to hope for more than that."

"I'm sorry," she commented, feeling a twinge. At least Jarod had made the effort to get as close to both her and Charles as he could in the years they had spent in very close proximity. Jarod had struggled hard to put together his family — and Sydney had been locked out of his.

Sydney shook his head. "Don't be. It is, after all, a twisted kind of payback. I am the father-figure to a man who is your husband's son, and yet am just a distant blood relative to my own son."

"You weren't the one who kidnapped my son, were you?" she asked carefully. "I remember a man who looked and sounded very much like you do now talking to me about Jarod's potential not long before Jarod was taken — that wasn't you, was it?"

"No, that was my brother, Jacob," he replied. "He did the intake work on Jarod, not I."

"And you say that you had little choice in having to fulfill the role you did?"

Sydney looked at her sharply. "I swear to you, if it had been within my power to take Jarod away from the Centre when I started to have my doubts — if I had known then what I know now — I would like to think that I would have taken him out myself." But then he looked down at his hands, and at his leg being obliged to straighten and bend endlessly. "But the fact of the matter is that I'm a coward — I don't know that I would have had the strength."

"I don't think you're a coward," Margaret said firmly. "If you were, you wouldn't have the balls to admit it."

The older man shot her an appreciative but twisted smile at her frankness. "You never know."

"I'd like to think I have a fair idea," she replied. "I want you to know that I'm willing to share my son with you — not that I've ever had much choice in the matter, but I guess I don't mind it so much anymore. But then, I never had competition as a mother — it was Charles who always walked in your shadow as a father. He told me once that he'd met you one time, and thought you were a decent man. I've always trusted Charles' ability to judge character. Charles may have been jealous as hell of you, but he respected you — and God knows, despite everything, you did a good job raising our son."

"How are you doing this?" Sydney asked finally. The magnanimity of her words had nearly taken his breath away. He had prepared himself to be blamed, verbally scourged and put in his place — certainly not this!

"Doing what?"

"I don't think that I could be half this reasonable with the man who raised my son as his own, were I in a similar situation — and I know damned well that I wouldn't be as kind. I think the jealousy would be eating me alive."

"Ah," Margaret smiled at him, and suddenly Sydney caught a fleeting glimpse of the stunning young woman she had once been, "but our situations are very different. You never took MY place."

"I just stole your son's childhood from you."

"No," she shook her head. "I think I understand that part of Jarod's reasoning now. You weren't the one who stole his childhood, the Centre did."

"Same difference. I was part of the Centre."

"On one level, yes — but on another, I don't think so." She gazed at him evenly. "Either way, hating you or even being jealous the way I told you about Sunday won't bring me those lost years back. And, despite everything, I'm finding it very hard not to like you as a person."

That startled him. "Thank you!" he mumbled, then gazed at her cautiously. "You're a very special lady as well, you know…"

Margaret found herself suddenly blushing, and then was very grateful that the front door chose that precise moment to slam shut, shattering the moment.

Deb's voice called out into the house, "I'm home — and what am I fixing for supper?"

Sydney's gaze very lightly touched Margaret. "Can I convince you to stay for supper?"

"As a matter of fact, I brought some of the ingredients for it when I came," she told him lightly as she eased herself from the comfort of her chair. "Jarod called and said they were going to be late and to meet them here. I figured that they'd probably be tired and hungry and would appreciate being able to just sit down and eat. I'll tell Deb…"

"Good," he replied to himself as she moved past him into the kitchen and started up an animated conversation with Deb about meal plans.

He sighed and relaxed back into his pillow for the little time that remained of his afternoon therapy, his mind replaying what had just transpired. The much-dreaded talk with Jarod's mother had gone better than he'd expected — and his soul felt just a bit lighter for having won, if not her forgiveness, at least her understanding. He had meant what he said — Maggie Russell was a remarkable woman. Remarkable indeed!

David Lawler stared at the tall man who was now sitting back comfortably in the chair next to him with legs crossed comfortably and a lightly amused smirk on his face. He'd wanted answers, and he certainly had gotten what he wanted — in spades! He remembered wishing to Whisper Man that he could interview Jarod. Little had he known that the future had determined that he be allowed precisely that.

More than startling had been the disclosure that Jarod — Dr. Russell — had willingly returned to the Centre to take up a position of considerable authority AND that the man was engaged to marry Miss Parker. Imaginings about a hunted and paranoid man continuing to live a life on the run and/or filled with thoughts of revenge against the Centre had been completely blown out of the water by the reality of the calm and self-assured Pretender. That the man was a genius was undeniable — it had taken several distinct tries for him to get over the creepy feeling when Jarod would seem to know what he was thinking and answer questions that never needed to be voiced.

And ultimately, when the pretty Chinese secretary had finished delivering the last bundle of documentation, he knew he had as much of the truth as any of the principals of the story did. And the story was nothing like he'd been led to believe by Whisper Man — that it was incredible and ugly hadn't changed, but where the responsibility lay for that ugliness and horror was nowhere near the feet of the current Chairman.

"Are there any other questions that we can answer for you?" Miss Parker asked finally, looking back and forth between Jarod and the reporter.

Lawler shook his head slowly. "No. I think I have more than enough material here to keep me busy for a long time to come. The only question I have left is about the future, not the past."

Miss Parker cocked an eyebrow invitingly at the man in the horn-rimmed glasses. "Oh?"

"If I decide to write an exposé of the underhanded dealings the government has had with firms like the Centre, will I be sticking my neck out legally as far as the Centre is concerned?"

She traded a long glance with Jarod before shrugging. "I would say that that will depend entirely on how you write the story. Provided that you stick to the facts of the matter, and absolve the present administration of any responsibility in the matter, I can't see where you'd have much to worry about from us." She leaned forward. "But, you realize, the Centre wasn't the only research and development firm that some of these people had contracts with — and they may NOT take your actions as kindly."

Lawler's face showed his agreement. "I won't write that part of the story until I have iron-clad evidence against them — the kind that will hold up in a trial. I just wanted you to know that I don't intend to let the story about the government's participation in this go."

"I don't blame you," Jarod told him frankly. "The story needs to come out — if for no other reason than to make sure that it doesn't happen again." He gave the reporter a twisted smile. "I'd be willing to bet that it would be as much of a story as the Watergate break-in did — with much the same consequence for the man who writes it."

Lawler pored into Jarod's dark chocolate eyes yet again to see if there was any agenda behind that observation of his most secret wish, to find nothing but curiosity and understanding there. "Yeah," he nodded. "I suppose so." He moved the stack of folders and documents into his briefcase and struggled to get it closed around the bulk, then rose. "I don't quite know how to thank you for your time, Miss Parker, Doctor Russell."

"I do," Miss Parker rose and shook the reporter's hand firmly. "You can write a companion piece to the article you published today that puts answers to all those questions you posed that are based in fact, not speculation."

"I intend to," he assured her. "I'm sure that Whisper Man will be very disappointed in the next installment of what he or she thought would be a scathing exposé."

"You know," Jarod shook the reporter's hand as well, "it would be very intriguing to find out just who this Whisper Man of yours really is." He glanced up at Miss Parker. "Maybe a call to someone in the FBI might be in order?"

"That's possible," she replied with an appreciative nod, then turned back to her guest. "Thank you for coming and letting me — us — set the record straight."

"The pleasure was all mine, I assure you. And, I want to apologize for my article today. I'll be sending you advanced copy of the follow-up story before I print it, so you'll know what to expect." Lawler's glance touched all three Centre denizens in the room, finding even the expression on the burly bodyguard to be one of quiet attention and no longer remotely defensive.

"That piece served a good purpose in the end," Jarod remarked before Miss Parker could think of an adequate response. "It got the truth — the whole truth — out where it needed to be."

"Have a safe drive home, Mr. Lawler," Miss Parker said as she watched Jarod escort the reporter from the office and then close the door. She sat down quickly and tiredly. "My God!"

"It will be very interesting to read the man's next article," Jarod said with a smile as he walked toward her desk. "Are you ready to go home?"

"I've got…"

"Miss P," Sam broke in, finally easing from his posture of attention, "go home. You're tired and you know it."

Miss Parker's eyebrows skyrocketed toward her hairline. "Excuse me?"

"He's right, Missy," Jarod agreed with a nod of appreciation at Sam. "This has been a hard day for you, and you and I both know what this interview with Lawler took out of you before he even got here." He pointed to her briefcase. "Leave it until tomorrow, and let's head home."

"Does having you working for me mean that you're going to think you can come in here and bully me…"

"Yes, when you and I both know it's for your own good," Jarod replied.

Sam, knowing when his input was no longer needed, made a discreet exit with the intent of snaring Mei-Chiang and heading home himself.

She sighed and pushed herself to her feet. "Oh, all right. It's just that I hate it when I get ganged up on, though... Syd and Broots used to do it to me all the time."

"Good for them," Jarod smirked and stretched his hand out toward the door. "C'mon, Miss Parker. We're walking…"

"Watch it, Lab Rat…"

"That's Doctor Russell to you…"

"Are you sure this is necessary?" Canfield asked Gillespie as they climbed from the agent's sedan in the FBI garage.

"Considering what we heard when Senator Jackson came to see you in your office this afternoon, you bet," Gillespie answered in a very business-like tone. "He wasn't very happy with the answers you were giving him, and he let you know what lay in store for you if you didn't go along with what he and Burns were planning for Colonel Stiller. Don't tell me you didn't pick up on that…"

"No, I got it," Canfield shook his head, "but I didn't think…"

"My boss didn't want to have to worry about whether there is any substance behind the threat or no. Between the meeting you had with Jackson and Burns this noon and that little private conversation with Jackson this afternoon, we have more than enough to move on warrants and open entire new lines of investigation."

Canfield relaxed a little as Gillespie took him by the elbow and escorted him into the elevator car. "Then I'm not going to have to meet with them again tomorrow?"

The agent shook his head. "Nope."

The tall Montanan leaned back against the wall of the elevator car and closed his eyes. It was over. Now all that was left was the legal mess that his participation with the FBI would cause.

He could live with that. And when it was all through, well… he'd see. He'd see.

"We have a problem, and its name is George Canfield."

Harry Burns leaned back with his martini and looked at Tom Jackson. "No shit. I could tell that in the car. Did you get a chance to talk to him?"

"That's how I know we REALLY have a problem on our hands." Jackson sipped at his whiskey sour thoughtfully. "I don't think George was ready for things to get down and dirty and splash him personally."

"Damned freshman Senators anyway," Burns griped morosely, then propped his drink on the arm of his chair. "Did you get in touch with your contact?"

Jackson nodded. "We'll have to be patient — evidently Stiller has been moved to a high security wing of the stockade. Getting in and taking care of business may cost us more than the usual fee."

"It's worth it, thought," Burns said, only partially paying attention to the fact that Jackson's doorbell had run.

Jackson listened and then smiled as he heard his wife scurrying to answer the door. "Did you talk to Sanderson about subpoenaing the Centre for a hearing into its business practices with the military?" he asked, satisfied that whoever it was at the door would be dealt with efficiently.

"Yeah — and I gave him copies of the documentation you gave me," Burns grinned back. "How much you want to bet that we have that bitch calling us up and begging us to let her off the hook?"

"Tom…"

Callie normally knew better than to interrupt one of her husband's "meetings" with his Senatorial colleagues, and Jackson's face was twisted in rage at her evidently having forgotten it this evening. He slowly rose to his full height. "I've told you a thousand times…" His words died suddenly when he saw that his shrinking wife was standing next to two suited gentlemen who were watching his every move very carefully. Something told him that he didn't want to finish the sentence he'd been speaking. "Who are you and what do you want?" he demanded of the visitors.

"Senator Tom Jackson?"

"Yes. Damn it, what do you…"

"And you are Senator Harold Burns?" the anonymous suit asked next, shifting his attention to the man still seated in the easy chair.

"Yes?" Burns put his drink on the small table near him.

"I am Assistant Director Berghoff with the FBI, and the man with me is Special Agent Tom Gillespie. We are here to put you gentlemen under arrest for…"

"Excuse me," Jackson stated in astonishment. "I am a United States Senator…"

"…For conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit libel…"

Burns leapt to his feet. "You can't arrest us…"

Berghoff simply turned a cold glare at the two men. "I assure you, the arrest warrants we're serving come directly from the Justice Department itself, and notice of intent to execute these warrants was sent to the Ethics Committee earlier this evening."

"Callie, call Jake Thompson," Jackson demanded as Agent Gillespie moved behind him and began securing his hands with handcuffs. When his wife didn't move a muscle, he raised his voice. "CALLIE!! Call Jake Thompson, NOW!"

Berghoff didn't miss the flinch that Mrs. Jackson gave at the verbal whip that had been cracked in her direction, nor the fact that the woman had yet to carry out her husband's wishes. "Jake Thompson?" he asked cooly.

"My lawyer," Jackson hissed, seething.

"Tom…" Burns attempted to calm his friend down, seeing what the federal agents were seeing and not liking the impression that it was making with them. "Calm down." He looked at Berghoff haughtily. "You're forgetting something," he sneered.

"No, just waiting for a little quiet," Berghoff countered. "You gentlemen have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you…" He rattled off the traditional Miranda warning by heart, knowing that both men in front of him probably were just as familiar with its strictures. "Let's move."

Gillespie took Burns' elbow and Berghoff took charge of Jackson's. "CALLIE!" the Vermont Senator bellowed again and struggled against the iron hand at his arm.

"Yelling like that isn't going to help any," Berghoff announced with calm and quiet. "And you each have the right to a single telephone call, once you've been booked." He pulled a little harder at the man's elbow. "And you really don't want to add resisting arrest to the list of charges, now, do you?"

Callie Jackson watched with shock and amazement as the federal agents led her husband and his friend from the house, and only when the door had closed behind them securely did she feel safe enough to react. Slowly her body began to shake, starting with her legs and working upwards until she had to wrap her arms around herself to keep from falling down.

She couldn't believe it. The police had taken Tom away, and she'd actually survived to see it with her own eyes. Suddenly she could be sure that he wouldn't be returning to the house for a reasonable period of time. Her eyes began to dart around the room, and she suddenly began to move — heading for the stairs and that little suitcase that she'd had packed and secreted away for so very long. With a speed built of fear of being caught in this final bit of marital betrayal, she pulled the tiny slip of paper from an inner pocket of her purse and picked up the telephone.

Eventually the front door to the house opened again, and she slipped out with her suitcase and purse in hand. The cab company had said that they would be there in just five minutes — and another call had alerted the woman's shelter of her coming.

With any luck, Callie Jackson knew that she was at last free — just as her daughter had been for the last year and a half. Maybe someday she'd be able to find Karen again — and tell her how sorry she was that she hadn't been able to protect her.

"Well, I'm hoping that your afternoon wasn't entirely wasted waiting for us to call on your services, Kevin," Jarod said, handing the young man the sliced French bread across the table.

"Oh, I just read at the files that I was working on this morning," Kevin told him with a smile of thanks. "Something about viral reagents and aerosol applicators. I think it was one of your projects…"

Jarod and Sydney exchanged glances, and then Jarod's eyes widened. "Oh yeah – I remember that one."

"What about your day?" Sydney asked Miss Parker pointedly. "Is the Centre going to be taking any action against the Post?"

Miss Parker shook her head. "I have the promise of the reporter involved that there will be a follow-up story published that will correct any misconceptions that the initial story may have caused." She lay a gentle hand against her foster-father's shoulder. "Tempest in a teapot, Syd – nothing that should have gotten us all that riled…"

"We still would be well advised to call the FBI and report this attempt at slander and libel, Missy," Jarod interjected. "That article was the result of someone making a very deliberate attempt at a smear campaign against the Centre in general and you in particular."

"What do you mean, 'tempest in a teapot,' Parker?" Sydney demanded. "I finally read the damned article – and the insinuations were anything but just a game. What's more, my name was mentioned, as was Broots'."

"My dad's name was mentioned in so many words?" Deb frowned. "They can do that?"

"I wouldn't worry too much about it, Deb," Jarod assured her. "By the time Parker and I got through talking to the man, I seriously doubt that he'll cause any more trouble for either your dad or your grandpa…"

"It isn't the reporter that I'm worried about," Sydney said with a scowl. "It's some crusading legal eagle wanting to make his mark in the world on my scalp or Broots' hind side."

"Surely when this follow-up article is published that takes both you and Deb's father off the hook, that shouldn't much of a worry anymore – should it?" Margaret soothed, taking her clue from her son's attitude.

Sydney's chestnut eyes were anguished when he looked over at her. "Remember what we were discussing earlier – how some of those SIMs were horrific? As the person most directly responsible for Jarod's welfare during his years in the Centre's custody, I will be the one held accountable…"

"I already told you, Sydney, that I wouldn't let that happen," Jarod reminded his former mentor very firmly. "It will be very difficult for anybody to level charges at you if the one person who is supposedly the most damaged by these actions of yours refuses to press charges."

"They may decide to move just on the principle of the thing," Sydney grumbled, then took a big bite of his spaghetti in order not to say anything else.

"Are you going to be arrested, Grandpa?" Davy was aghast.

"No, he's not," Miss Parker stated unequivocally.

"Don't you worry about me, Davy," Sydney told his grandson, his eyes sending out the message to the other adults at the table to put the kaibosh on any further discussion of his possible legal woes until at least the children weren't present. "I'll be just fine."

Ginger listened to the adults around her talking as if the older man with the funny way of talking was in some kind of trouble. She stared at him in wonder and worry. Davy had spent a great deal of time they had spent together in the tree house yesterday afternoon telling her all about their Grandpa and the interesting mind games that he played sometimes. She trusted what Davy told her implicitly – which meant that it hadn't taken much talking to convince her that Grandpa was an extra-special person. Even more, from what Daddy had said earlier that day, it sounded as if Grandpa would be the one to help her get ready so that she could finally go to school with her big brother. It didn't take her much work to realize that if they came to take Grandpa away…

"No take Gammpa 'way, Daddy!" the little girl burst out finally. "Him not Bad Man."

Sydney's mouth dropped open at the exclamation, and Jarod bent over his daughter. "Nobody's going to do anything to Grandpa, Sprite," he reassured her with a hug and a kiss.

The little girl was not to be calmed. She squirmed out of her father's embrace, slipped from her chair and ran around the end of the table. Sydney barely had the time to turn before he found himself being clambered upon as Ginger used the supports of the dining chair and a strong grasp on his shirt to make her way up onto his lap. "Oo not Bad Man," she announced to him vehemently, her dark eyes wide and looking up into his face trustingly and certain. She knew Bad Men – Bad Men were huge, and their voices were big, and their hands did nothing but hurt whatever they touched. Grandpa, on the other hand, had protected her – he had let her take refuge with him in the back room while the Big Man had been in the house. Davy adored him, Daddy obviously cared a lot for him, even She seemed very fond of him. Suddenly it clicked – Grandpa was family, something that Ginger had wanted for a very long time and didn't want to see threatened in any way.

"Hush, ma petite, everything will be OK," Sydney steadied his new granddaughter on his lap carefully. How much she looked like Yvette in that moment, he thought to himself suddenly as the memory of that last moment in the camp before the Nazis had come to take his little sister away to the showers washed inexorably over him. He shook himself from the memory with difficulty and put a gentle hand to the side of her head. "I promise."

Those dark eyes seemed to look right down to the bottom of his soul. "No be sad, Gammpa," she announced in a clear, bell-like voice. "Me take care oo." And with that, she turned around to face her grandfather and threw her arms around his neck to hug him tightly.

Sydney's heart caught in his throat. Yvette's very last words to him in Dachau had been an eerily precognitive exhortation for him not to be sad, and once more the pain of that moment in long-ago time washed over him with a strength that there was no way for him to deny. And yet, even in the midst of the anguish and horror of the memory, he could feel the way the child in his lap was hanging onto him with all her strength. Stunned arms were slow to come up and surround her, but once they had found their place around the girl, they held her as tightly as she clung to him. "Je t'aime aussi, ma petite," he whispered with eyes tightly shut, not entirely sure to whom he was pledging his heart.

"I guess she's finally accepted him," Miss Parker commented very softly to Margaret.

"It happened that same way with her uncles Jay and Nathan too," the older woman replied. "One moment she was leery, and then suddenly the gates would open, and she would be her bouncy self with them." She smiled. "She knew Ethan from before – she already knew she could trust him. But Jay looked too much like Jarod, and Nathan was fairly tall – and you know how she is around big men…"

Whatever it was that Grandpa had whispered to her, Ginger understood the tone of voice he'd used even though she didn't understand the words. Grandpa felt like a much older version of her Daddy, in much the same way that She felt like a younger version of her Gamma. "Gammpa not sad 'more?" she asked without moving a muscle.

Sydney kissed the side of her head and loosened his arms around her just a little so that she could look at him again if she wanted to. "I'm not sad, ma petite," he told her gently. "After all, I have you taking care of me now, don't I?"

Ginger let go enough to finally look up into his face. "Oo gots sad eyes, Gammpa," she told him, putting a gentle little hand on the side of his face.

"Only because I know you're worried," he answered her, motionless beneath her piercing, dark gaze. "As soon as I know you're not worried anymore, I can be happy again."

"Them not take oo 'way?" she asked again.

"No, cheri. I'm not going anywhere. I don't think your Mommy or Daddy will let that happen." He put as much certainty into his voice as he could to convince her.

She looked around and saw her Daddy and Her nodding agreement at her, and so she nodded too. "'Kay," she said finally and felt her grandfather kiss her head again.

"Why don't you go back and finish your supper," he told her, "and tell me all about what you did today before you came here. Did I hear your Grandma say that you spent time in the park?"

As Ginger nodded and felt her new grandfather lower her carefully back to the floor, Jarod glanced at Miss Parker and then his mother and smiled. Miss Parker's return smile was cautious – and he knew that she'd seen the look that had come over her foster father's face just like he had. It had been pretty obvious that another one of Sydney's painful memories had been tripped – probably a bad one – but somehow, he had managed to work through it.

One thing was for sure: one of them would have to remain behind that night, to coax him to open up and tell them what was going on – after Ginger and Davy had been taken home.

"That's the last of it," Lauren Mitchell announced as Hugh came back into the little apartment, obviously looking for the next bundle to haul out to the car. "You sure you're not going to want any more of this pizza?"

"No, ma'am, I'm full – really," he told her with a contented look on his face. True to her word, she had ordered a large pizza and had it hot and ready to eat by the time he had arrived at the apartment. Dinner conversation had centered at first on speculation about what would happen to the man who had attacked her. Hugh had reassured her that he doubted that Stiller would see the light of day for a while, considering all the evidence against him. In his mind, it was only a question of whether the civilian authorities would be the ones paying for his upkeep or the military.

In return, he'd had the privilege of watching the very last of her anxiety slowly fade away until the only visible sign of her ordeal left was the faint red mark that still ringed her neck. Once he had her hopefully convinced of her own safety again, the conversation began to wander – and the class distinction that he'd always felt had separated him as a sweeper from her as a research scientist began to fade away too. He found himself telling her stories about his early days as a sweeper, and she had finally gotten him to laughing telling him some of the stories about her days as a student.

"Why don't you take this upstairs to Crystal then," she suggested, closing the top of the cardboard box over the three huge pieces that remained of their supper, "while I do one last check of everything and then lock up?"

"OK." Hugh took the box from her and took the stairs outside the door two at a time. The very young lady who lived upstairs now took a moment to answer the door and stared at him in surprise. "Dr. Mitchell thought you might enjoy this," he explained, holding the box forward.

"Thanks!" Crystal was startled. "Is she OK? I thought…"

"She's fine," Huge told her. "But the man who had attacked her has finally been taken out of the area, and she's decided to move back into her own house. She's moving tonight."

"Does Xing-Li know? I'm sure she'll want to say goodbye too…" Crystal deposited the pizza on the bookcase near the door and then grabbed up her key and thrust it into a pocket before pulling the door shut. "I'll get her."

She followed Hugh down the stairs and then knocked on the door opposite Lauren's until it opened. "Lauren's going home tonight," she announced. "I thought you'd like a chance to say goodbye."

"Yes, thank you!" The Chinese secretary left her door open and followed Crystal to where Lauren was standing next to her car. "So this is it?" she asked quietly.

"Yup," the chemist nodded, then put out her arms to give a quick hug to first Xing-Li and then to Crystal. "I hope I can talk you guys into coming and visiting me sometimes," Lauren exclaimed. "I've gotten used to having neighbors that I could talk to after work – and not having you two around is one of the only down sides to moving back home."

"I'm sure we'd like to," Crystal spoke first, "but you know that you're the only one of us with a car…"

"I'll just have to kidnap you guys then," Lauren decided. "I'll be in touch."

"Take good care of yourself," Xing-Li told her friend gently. "We'll miss you too."

Lauren sighed. "At least this isn't like a complete goodbye – because I hate those. I'll find you at work – we can always arrange to take our lunches together."

"That sounds good to me," Crystal smiled, enjoying the camaraderie of her two best friends. "And have fun moving back into your house."

Lauren gave Hugh a smile, then turned to her friends with raised eyebrows. "At least I have help with that," she sighed happily and waved. "See you." She turned back to Hugh. "Let's get this stuff home now."

"Yes, ma'am," Hugh replied and climbed into his car, prepared to follow the pretty lady scientist to her house. This wasn't such a bad way to spend a Monday evening at all. His only regret was that after tonight, he'd have no excuse to spend any more evenings with Doctor Mitchell anymore. He'd miss that.

"Say goodnight, Sprite," Jarod directed his little girl gently.

"Goo'nite, Gammpa," she obliged and put up her arms to the man still in the chair.

Sydney bent carefully and hugged the child tightly. "Bete noir, ma petite," he whispered into her ear and then kissed it. "Maybe your Grandma can be talked into bringing you over to see me again – what do you say?"

Ginger's eager gaze found her grandmother smiling. "OK," she replied. "Me see you 'morrow."

"Take my car," Miss Parker told Jarod while she watched her children bid their grandfather goodnight. "You'll all fit better. I'll bring the sports car back later, after…"

"Good luck," Jarod whispered to her and kissed her cheek. "I'll see you in a little while." He turned to his mother and children. "Last one to Mommy's car's a rotten egg…"

Davy and Ginger both whooped and took off out the front door at a dead run, with a chuckling Margaret bidding Sydney goodnight and following close behind. "I think Missy wants to talk to you," Jarod told his former mentor with a wave. "And I'll see you in the morning so we can continue our talk."

Sydney's gaze met Miss Parker's, and he worked hard not to sigh. She had that determined look on her face again – one that told him that she was going to be expecting a serious discussion. He'd hoped she hadn't noticed his lapse when Ginger had climbed into his lap — but evidently, she had.

Deb looked into Miss Parker's face and took a firm hold of Kevin's arm. "Let's go see if the swings in the park are still working," she suggested with a knowing look.

Kevin smiled and let her lead him from the house, not exactly sure what had gotten into Deb but more than happy to have a chance to have her all to himself after a long day without her completely.

Miss Parker waited until the only people in the house were Sydney and herself, and then seated herself at the dining table with him. "Looks as if you have another fan, Syd."

"So it would seem," he replied carefully. "Look, Parker…"

"Sydney," she interrupted, putting a hand on his arm. "Talk to me."

"About what?" he asked, being deliberately obtuse. He was tired and didn't really want to have this conversation.

She tipped her head at him, obviously disappointed. "You know very well what I'm talking about," she informed him with quiet determination. "You promised…"

He sighed audibly this time. "It really wasn't all that much…"

"It was enough that even Ginger noticed it," she reminded him. "She said you had sad eyes – that was a masterpiece of understatement, if I ever heard one. What was it?"

Sydney closed his eyes for a long moment, waiting for the memory to wash over him again in a suffocating wave and being surprised when it didn't. He opened his eyes and looked at her again. "I just… the last thing Yvette said to me just before the Nazis took her away was for me not to be sad. When Ginger said the same thing…"

Miss Parker nodded, understanding at last the poignancy and pain of the memory that had been unlocked and released. "She still reminds you of your sister a great deal, doesn't she?"

The chestnut eyes gazed at her with muted pain in their depths. "You have no idea. Sometimes I have to shake myself to remind myself that I'm looking at your daughter and not my sister."

"You weren't ready for what happened at the table tonight, were you?"

He shook his head. "No, I wasn't. She'd been so timid until then…"

"Maggie said that she did the same with both Jay and Emily's husband, Nathan. One moment she'd be all leery and afraid, and in the next, she had decided they were neat people." Her face grew soft. "I'm just glad it didn't take a long time for her to accept you. Jarod was talking about her working with you…"

"I know." He was quiet for a while. Then, "You know, sometimes when I look at her, I see you too."

"Me!" She was astonished.

"I knew you when you were a very little girl, Parker, remember? Catherine used to bring you into the Centre every once in a while – I remember helping you learn your letters one of those times." His expression was soft, much happier. "She looks a lot like you did at her age – or at least when you were her size. She's so small for her age."

"So you're sure it was just the one memory this time?" Miss Parker brought the discussion back where she knew it needed to be.

"I promise, Parker," he told her with a sad smile. "And it wasn't so much that it was painful as it was... I had forgotten… and when I remembered, the memory was so strong…" He put his hand on hers as it lay on the table. "Honestly, it was just that the memory snuck up on me and was so overwhelming there for a moment."

"All right," she said finally, turning her hand over and catching his. "I just don't want you holding any of this stuff in anymore. When you have something like that happen, you need to talk it through — either with me or with Jarod." When his expression grew stubborn again, she sighed. "C'mon, Sydney. You asked for help with this, remember?"

"I know, sweetheart," he agreed and then reluctantly explained further. "All right — I have to admit, this was a flashback more than it was a simple memory. There for a little while, I wasn't sure who I was talking to — Yvette or Ginger." His fingers curled around hers. "For a moment, I could have sworn I could see… the smokestacks of the ovens, the wood of the platform we were standing on… the shower buildings…"

"No wonder Ginger said you had sad eyes." Miss Parker's gaze grew soft. "Tell me about that day — it haunts you so now…"

Sydney stared at her for a long moment, his eyes slowly filling, debating with himself the wisdom of trying to remember with any detail. Then he pressed his lips together tightly and began to shake his head. "We had been in the boxcars for days, I think. I suppose I should be thankful that it had been autumn and the weather had been neither too hot nor cold — but still, it had been hot and close in there. There had been little water, and the only place to relieve ourselves was a bucket in the corner that sloshed and spilled with every jerk the train made. When we finally stopped and the soldiers threw the doors open, we thought only of getting out into the fresh air," he remembered in a harsh whisper. "It was morning – and the air outside the boxcar smelled so wonderful. I can remember stepping out onto the platform and thinking that anyplace was better than the inside of that boxcar. The first thing the soldiers did was to sort us — Jacob and I were frightened when the soldiers took us and put us in a smaller group with some others and then…" He paused to control his voice. "And then the soldiers led my parents and sister away. I'll never forget the look on my mother's face as Yvette told me not to be sad. I…" He paused, his eyes closed. "I never saw any of them alive again."

"What happened then?" she asked gently.

"They took us into this big building where we had to strip and put on prisoner uniforms. Then first I and then Jacob were handed slips of paper with numbers on them and told to go through a door. Two soldiers forced me to sit on a chair while the tattooist copied the numbers from the slip of paper onto my arm." Sydney covered his left forearm protectively, even though his sleeve was covering the still-clear numbers that remained there after all that time. "The soldiers then took us to a long barracks, where we were shown what was essentially a bare rack that had enough space for the two of us to sleep. After a while, we were served a thin gruel with some kind of flavoring in it — I didn't like it, and after I knew what went on there, I tried very hard not to think about what the flavoring WAS. Then Herr Doktor Krieg came for us and gave us both injections of something in the infirmary — then let the soldiers take us away and show us where we would be working. It was while we were being led away that we saw the cart of bodies… and Yvette…"

Her fingers tightened around his. "Sydney…"

He shook his head more determinedly this time. "After that, the days and nights seemed to just fade one into the next — while our hair and clothes filled with the smell of the smoke from the chimneys." He gazed at her with tragic eyes. "Don't ask for more, Parker. I'm tired and I'd like to be able to sleep tonight."

"All right," she agreed easily and reached out her other hand to join the knot of fingers on the table. "Are you going to be all right?"

He nodded, his lips pressed tightly together once more. "I'll be trying to remember the small victories of the day," he told her, squeezing the hand in his, "like my having had that long talk with Margaret Russell that she wanted…"

"Oh really?" Miss Parker's eyebrows raised. "How did that go?"

"Better than I'd hoped," he said, giving her a shaky smile, but holding the memory of the conversation close and not ready to share it yet. "And then there's Deb deciding to take her morning-after pill a little later than morning after so that she doesn't have to worry about a baby…"

"I was wondering how that had turned out, and hadn't found a good place or time to ask."

"So," he continued after another squeeze, "if I keep my mind focused on those things, perhaps I can get a decent night's sleep without the need for another dose of pain med."

"How's the knee?"

"Damned sore — I think the exercises Pete gave me are going to kill me — but I think I'll get through it." He reached out and smoothed the backs of his fingers across her cheek. "You go home and get yourself some rest now," he directed with firm gentleness. "You had a big day, and an upsetting one. Get Jarod to give you a massage."

She cracked a crooked smile. "That's actually not a bad idea."

"And tell him I'll have some coffee waiting for him when he gets here."

Miss Parker rose and bent over him to give him a hug. "You sure you're going to be all right?"

Sydney tsked at her and shook his head. "Go on, Parker. I'm a big boy now." He kissed her cheek. "I'll be fine."

After an assessing look, she headed for the front door. Sydney waved back at her as she took up her briefcase and purse and closed the door quietly behind her. Finally he could reach out a hand for his crutches, pull himself to his feet and head for the den. It had been a big day for him too — especially the latter part of the day. He needed his rest. Maybe if he hurried up and fell asleep quickly enough, he could beat out Kevin's insistence on another dose of pain medication.

Whether he could get away without another nightmare was anybody's guess.

"You're aware that Tom Jackson came to me earlier this afternoon, wondering if there wasn't something in this article that the Post published that we might want to look into when it came to one of our major defense contractors," Senator Jesse Sanderson asked, pouring Becca Ashland a splash of brandy into the bottom of an old fashioned glass and handing it to her.

"No, I wasn't," she replied, raising her glass a little in gratitude and then clinking hers to his before taking a sip, "but then, about the time you were having your heart-to-heart with Tom, I was hearing from the Justice Department about the evidence they had amassed against him and Harry Burns and George Canfield regarding their part in the conspiracy that got all those military men arrested just the other day — and now the way they were intended to smear the reputation of the Centre in order to divert attention from their own legal woes."

"Do you honestly think that we shouldn't call a hearing to have the current Chairman of the Centre explain herself?"

"You know," Ashland put her glass on the desk and leaned forward to poke a finger at the thick folder that both she and Sanderson, as members of the Armed Services Committees, had received, "what we SHOULD be asking ourselves is how many others might be involved. This evidence spans decades — years that this Miss Parker was only a flunky in the organization. What were the legislators who were behind the money that was siphoned to the Centre for some of these projects thinking, Jess?" She sat back in her seat and picked up her drink again. "This is an ugly can of worms we've opened. The question in my mind is just exactly how deeply into the can we intend to dig — and whether that damned article in the Post won't get the private sector interested enough that the moment we stop digging, they START because they smell a cover-up."

"You think this is bigger than just Jackson, Burns and Canfield, don't you." Sanderson's comment wasn't a question.

"Don't you?" Ashland shot back pointedly. "Do the math, Jess. And ask yourself if YOU would like to be held accountable for the actions taken by the man who previously held YOUR office."

Sanderson glanced at her nervously and sipped thoughtfully at his drink. "But we have Jackson and his crew, right?"

"The FBI is requesting that we give special consideration to the assistance that Canfield gave in providing the final nails in the other two's coffins. He wore a wire — did you read those final transcripts?"

"I smell an Ethics Committee hearing for those jerks, at the very least," Sanderson answered with a grin.

"No…" Ashland grinned back. "Ya think?" She knocked back the rest of her brandy and put the glass gently on the desk. "So… Do you still want to pull the Centre into a full hearing?"

The African-American Senator from Alabama shook his head slowly. "Not so fast, Becca. That reporter seemed to be in on a lot of information that suggests that the Centre has been involved in illegal activity — whether at governmental request or not — for a very long time. As a major contractor for our military and intelligence communities, don't you think we have an obligation…"

"We can quietly send this reporter a message that some of us here on the Hill are waiting to see what he has to say next," Ashland suggested. "Or," she amended when she saw the look of skepticism, "we can simply wait and see if the next article is as provocative as the last and take our cue from that. If this Lawler fellow has enough to implicate the Centre and make it stick, he'll start writing about it. THEN we'll know that we need to look more closely at what the Centre's been doing for us."

Sanderson thought for a long moment, then finally nodded. "That sounds reasonable." He drained his glass. "I just hope that reporter doesn't take too long in writing that next article…"

Feedback, please:


	30. Tearing Down Walls

Resolutions – 30

Tearing Down Walls

by MMB

Crystal stood at her bathroom mirror, seeing if she could still remember how to do one of the more complicated braids that she had used to wear when she had been in school. She knew that Doctor Cavendish had mentioned to her, just before she'd left for the day yesterday, that he wanted her back again today to help him finish alphabetizing his files. Oddly enough, she enjoyed working for the elderly psychiatrist — in a way, he reminded her a little bit of Sydney. Even better, he KNEW Sydney and wasn't averse to spinning tales about him for her while she worked.

In the background, she could hear the little radio that sat on top of the bookcase in the living room spitting out the major news stories for the day. She had surprised herself the day before and found that listening to the news while she got ready to work had been a good way to relax — not to mention a way for her to catch up with the events in a world she'd been unaware of since leaving home.

At last! She pulled the rest of her long hair over her shoulder and braided it nearly to the end with quick and practiced fingers, then twisted the band around it several times to hold it. She tossed the finished product back over her shoulder and exited the bathroom, listening absently for a moment, and then blinking at what she was hearing:

"…FBI announced this morning that they had taken three US Senators into custody on a variety of charges including conspiracy to commit murder. Montana Senator George Canfield, Florida Senator Harold Burns and Vermont Senator Tom Jackson were arrested yesterday evening following an extensive investigation of evidence that allegedly links these three men to the military conspiracy that resulted in the arrests of nearly thirty military officers and civilians almost a week ago. An unnamed Senate spokesman confirmed that all three are being held in federal detention, pending a hearing…"

Crystal reached behind her for the wooden arm of the futon couch that was the closest form of support and leaned hard. Arrested! It seemed barely possible. She had been so certain that he would have been able to continue to get away with his actions — that his well-placed and supportive friends would be able to smooth away any inconvenient allegations. For the first time in a very long time, she spared a thought for her mother, the one person who had probably seen more of her father's fist than she had. Was she even still alive? She'd been out of touch with the news for so long now…

The knock at her door brought her out of her stupor. She grabbed up her purse and, after opening it quickly to make sure she had her key safely stowed, made another grab for the foil-wrapped sandwich that would be her lunch for the day. Then she opened the door to see Xing-Li waiting patiently for her. "Sorry I kept you waiting," she murmured softly, not trusting her voice as yet.

"Are you OK?" her Chinese friend asked at the sight of a face that was pale beneath its assorted bruises that had yet to truly begin to fade away.

"Yeah, sure," Crystal answered, stomping down the wish she could just lean on her friend's shoulder and cry out her relief and worries. "Why?"

Xing-Li's hand found Crystal's arm before she could push past her friend. "I mean it," she said earnestly. "You look as if you're ill."

Crystal shook her head. "Just heard something on the news that stirred up some old and unpleasant memories, that's all," she explained, trying to lighten her voice. "Nothing to worry about." She started down the stairs, then turned back to her friend halfway down. "Honest, Xing-Li. I'm OK."

Xing-Li was by no means convinced, but could see that her young friend wasn't in the mood to be open about what was bothering her. Maybe a call to Mei-Chiang later that morning could get a message to someone who might have more luck — Sydney, perhaps…

Lawler sat back in his office chair and sipped at his tepid coffee slowly. Unable to sleep for more than just a few hours after his eventful afternoon and long drive home, he had come into the newspaper while it was still dark out. There, he had disemboweled his bulging briefcase and had begun slowly reading through the additional documentation that Miss Parker had provided for him in answer to his questions. He'd worked his way through a goodly portion of it by the time the sun was peeking over the rooftops outside his office window, and as promised, everything that she or Jarod had told him had been borne out by the documentation. The monsters at the Centre – the ones responsible for initiating and running the really mind-boggling projects that would trouble any reasonable person -- had been the previous administrations, and not the present.

In and amongst the documentation was proof of the drastic turn-around that Miss Parker had initiated — emails and interdepartmental memos signaling a shift in priorities and procedure that directly contradicted much of what the Centre had stood for in years past. When put together with Whisper Man's documents, the insinuations of responsibility and wrong-doing that his informant had tried to burden Miss Parker with simply didn't hold up to scrutiny.

The Centre's financial cushion had amounted into the billions of dollars when she had inherited the control, and Miss Parker had emptied a good many of those deep coffers to buy her way out of contracts with organizations that no legitimate business would normally deal with in the first place. The Centre still wielded a great deal of power and influence courtesy of its previous ties, and it was by no means financially strapped for cash. But after meeting the people at the head of it now, Lawler doubted that the power and influence or money the Centre still possessed would be used any longer to intimidate or bribe to any extent greater than any other multinational corporation.

"Hey, David — you're in already?" Hitchens paused on his way through the maze of desks to his office in surprise. "Where the hell did you disappear to yesterday, anyway? My telephone started ringing about eleven o'clock…"

"I drove to Blue Cove and talked to the Chairman of the Centre," Lawler announced as he continued to stare at his blank word processor screen. "I got the answers to my questions."

Hitchens nearly dropped his cardboard coffee cup from Starbucks. "Say what?"

"AND I talked to that genius all those documents referred to, that Pretender fellow — Jarod. Get this: he's there at the Centre again, working FOR Miss Parker of his own free will and getting ready to marry her." Lawler looked up into the stunned and troubled face of his editor. "Whisper Man was using me to get to her, Carroll," he admitted with all the pent frustration that had accumulated during the long drive home. "The stuff he gave me — that was only one half the story, deliberately trimmed to make the Centre and Miss Parker look as guilty as sin. The Centre IS guilty — even she admits that – but she isn't guilty of anything more than working for them when the worst of it was going on and not being in any position to stop it."

Hitchens propped his backside against the desk at Lawler's side. "So what are you going to do?"

"I'm gonna write an article in which I answer all the questions that I posed in the last one — and I'm gonna explain exactly who I talked to and what all they had to say." He glanced up into his editor's face. "And then I'm going to do some digging and find out just exactly who this Whisper Man is that tried to set me up like that. I don't appreciate being used like that."

Hitchens heisted his backside off the desk. "Let me see what you have when you're finished," he called back over his shoulder. "It ought to make for some pretty interesting reading."

"That's for damned sure," Lawler answered distractedly as he laced his fingers together, then stretched his joined hand out backwards to crack the knuckles into limberness. Then he sat quietly for a moment, letting his mind stretch into a place where the words could come easily to him before reaching for the keyboard of his terminal and starting to type.

"How soon oo go 'kool, Davy?" Ginger asked with her mouth half-full of cereal.

"You, Sprite. If you want to go to school, you're going to have to talk right too, you know," Davy corrected her yet again.

"How soon YOU go 'kool, Davy?" she said again, a little more carefully.

Miss Parker saw the faintest of hints of impatience flash through the dark eyes of her new daughter before the girl corrected herself. Amused, she glanced up to see if Jarod had seen it. He hadn't — he had his nose buried in his coffee cup. Davy hadn't seen it either — although if Ginger turned out to have any kind of a temper, Miss Parker was certain that the constant correction would be part of what wore out the rose colored glasses of adoration through which Ginger viewed her big brother at the moment. Then again, Ginger was using the correct form now almost as often as her baby-talk, so maybe the corrections would fade away before the patience did.

"In just a few minutes," Davy answered his little sister and then picked up his bowl and drank the rest of the milk quickly in a move that made Miss Parker gape.

"David Thomas Parker! You know better than that!"

Ginger giggled while Davy shot his mother a quick and guilty look before slipping from his chair and carrying his dishes to the sink to rinse. Jarod was the one casting brief glances at Miss Parker's disgusted face this time. "You're just going to have to learn that you can't behave like an uncivilized male when your Mom's around," he sympathized with his son. "Just don't let her catch you drinking out of the milk carton – that will definitely get you in deep trouble!" Jarod then ducked with a cackle and a smirk when Miss Parker's open hand swung at the top of his head slowly enough that it was doomed to miss.

She immediately wished she could take the gesture back, however, when she caught the new expression in Ginger's eyes that had arisen in the last few seconds. Her little girl was once more gazing at her with that stomach-twisting mixture of fear and distrust that Miss Parker had hoped she'd seen the last of. "It was just a playful swat, Sprite — Mommy and Daddy were playing," she tried to explain, then sighed. Damn.

"She's right, Sprite," Jarod put his coffee cup down and joined his voice with hers when he finally looked over at Ginger and saw what Miss Parker had seen. "Mommies and Daddies sometimes play that way. She wasn't going to hurt me."

"I'm gone," Davy announced, grabbing up his backpack and lunch without seeing the drama developing at the kitchen table. "See you later, Sprite. You get to work with Grandpa today, don't you?"

"Uh-huh… Bye, Davy…" Ginger answered him absently, her mind still half-frozen by the aggressive move She had made toward Daddy. How many times had she seen that very same gesture aimed at herself or someone else — and how many times had she known the pain of having the swat connect.

The back screen door of the house slammed, and the sound galvanized Miss Parker into motion. She rose and walked around the corner of the table to be next to Ginger when she bent down to put herself at her daughter's eye level. "I'm sorry, baby," she said gently and reached out for the girl, only to stop when Ginger flinched badly. "I would never hurt you or Daddy," Miss Parker told the child sadly. "Your Daddy and I have played that way for so long, I just forgot…"

"Ginger…" Jarod started, then stopped when the little girl slid away from Miss Parker and ran to him to cling fearfully. He cast an apologetic look in Miss Parker's direction and bent to pull the child up into his arms, whereupon she burrowed in as close to him as she possibly could and hid her face against his neck and beard. Silently he gestured for Miss Parker to take a seat in Ginger's chair and listen. Nodding, she slipped into the chair and waited.

"I know that what you just saw probably looked scary, didn't it?" Jarod asked Ginger gently, earning himself a vehement nod against him. "You've seen that happen before, and bad things happened afterwards, didn't they?" Again the little girl nodded.

Miss Parker found her eyes pulled to where the round scars of repeated cigarette burns just barely showed on the girl's arm near the hem of her tee shirt sleeves. How could she forget so soon that this child had been horribly abused and mistreated? She bit her lip and berated herself bitterly for having in a careless instant shattered trust that had taken weeks to germinate and begin to sprout.

"But I though you liked Mommy," Jarod was continuing. "She fixed Bear for you, didn't she?" The answering nod was a little slower in coming, but it did happen. "Has Mommy ever hurt you, sweetheart?" Ginger twisted her head so that she could turn wary and distrustful eyes on Her again before she shook her head. No, She hadn't ever hurt her. Not yet, anyway… "Didn't she give you all sorts of pretty things when you got here — a bed with a canopy, like a princess?" Again she nodded. "Then what is it? Why are you afraid of her now?"

Ginger struggled with herself, trying to find the words to explain. "All mommies hurt," she managed finally. "They preten' be nice for while, then a of a sudden…" She tucked her nose back in her father's beard. "Me no wan' a mommy, Daddy."

Miss Parker caught her breath back and, after shooting a shocked and agonized look at Jarod, rose quickly and walked away from the table and toward the front of the house. She had to get away from the little girl who didn't want her, realizing in the same instant that she now wanted very much to win that girl's love and trust. She had accepted Ginger as a daughter – and had hoped that Ginger had started to accept her as a mother as well. From the looks of things now, it was right back to square one.

"Sprite, we live here with Mommy now," Jarod told his daughter as he rose to his feet with her in his arms. "Daddy loves Mommy, just like I love Davy. They're my family, and they're your family now too. I know you weren't expecting her to play with me like that, but I promise you that she would never hurt you — ever. I know that what she just did was really scary to you, but you need to give her another chance — for me. Please, Sprite?"

Ginger gave a deep sigh and pressed herself further into her father's arms. Daddy loves Mommy, he had said, they were family. She was going to have a Mommy one way or another, whether she wanted one or not.

"Missy, wait," Jarod called out, not having heard the front door close yet and knowing that she was probably shoving papers into her briefcase as fast as she could. He walked through the house until he found her, snapping the lid of her briefcase closed. "Missy, wait," he said again, catching her attention. "Ginger, can you give her another chance?" he asked the little girl in his arms again, this time letting her slip in his embrace just enough that she couldn't hide her face in his neck any longer.

"Jarod, don't force her," Miss Parker said with a shake of the head. "I frightened her, and I can understand entirely. It isn't like I didn't go through something similar," she told him with a knowing look in her eyes that kept him quiet. She turned her attention to the little girl who watched her like a hawk, ready to flinch again at the slightest movement seen as threatening. "I had a Daddy who hit me too, Sprite — not your Grandpa, but my real father — and I can remember being afraid of him sometimes too, just like you're afraid of me right now. I'm so sorry I frightened you, and I'll try very hard not to do that again. I wish I could show you that not all mommies hurt, baby, but I understand why you think that way."

She looked back up into Jarod's face. "Put her down, Jarod. She needs to know that it's safe for her to BE scared of me and have her fear respected. You need to not try to force her to resolve this right away." She could tell he wanted to make it all better — not that she blamed him. "This is something that Sprite and I will have to work out between us, Jarod — this isn't helping, honest. Let her go."

Jarod looked into Ginger's face and found it no less wary or distrustful than before, and he let the girl slip down slowly until she was on her own feet again. "Sprite, please…" he asked again, pleadingly.

"Go on," Miss Parker nodded to her fearful daughter. "You don't have to."

Ginger merely stayed where she was, with her back firmly pressed against her father's legs, watching closely what was going on. She wasn't behaving like those other mommies, trying to reach out and grab her and drag her closer so they could hurt her again. Had that hand swinging at Daddy just been in play, like both of them said?

"Sprite, have I ever lied to you?" Jarod refused to give in and bent slightly to look at the girl's face.

Ginger shifted her glance to his face and then shook her head. No, Daddy had never lied to her.

"Then trust me now. Mommy will not hurt you — she loves you. We were just playing. She would never hurt me either. Do you honestly believe that I would have brought you back to live with someone I thought would hurt you again?"

Ginger returned her gaze back to Her, a little of the fear set aside with her father's assurance but wary still.

"I'll see you later, Jarod," Miss Parker bent forward and kissed his cheek without moving any closer to him so as not to frighten Ginger any further. "I'll see you later too, Sprite. You have a good day with your Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa." The dark eyes watched Her somberly and distrustfully as She took up her briefcase and with the slightest of pauses to gather her wits and control her emotions, She opened the front door and walked away. Then Ginger looked back up into her father's face, only to find his expression one of disappointment as he looked at the closed door.

Daddy's disappointment and the idea that its presence was all her fault was the one thing she wasn't ready for, and Ginger caught back a sob of her own and took off at a run for the stairs and her bedroom. She pushed rather blindly past her grandmother, coming sleepily down the stairs, and closed herself in her room with a slam of her bedroom door.

"What's going on here?" Margaret demanded in a suddenly more awake voice, turning from following Ginger's retreat with her eyes to gaze down at her son at a base of the stairs.

Jarod sighed. This was the last thing any of them needed right now…

Deb stirred, then smiled as she came awake and found Kevin's arms around her once more the way she'd dreamed of having them. His breath was soft against the back of her neck beneath her braid, and his arms held her in close to his warmth. She relaxed back into her pillow and lay very still, soaking up the experience and appreciating it all the more for having had to do without it.

She'd had her nightmare, as predictable as always — and this time Kevin had been right there to help her pull free from the hold of the dream and then held her as she trembled and quietly mourned for a maybe-child that would never be. When she admitted the substance of her nightmare, he had just held her that much more closely. He too had been very subdued by the idea that they would never know if there would have been a child. He had been supportive of her decision, once he'd heard the reasons and had his own feelings about things aired, but still…

Their evening after their long walk and discussion had been spent quietly moving her belongings from Sydney's room into Kevin's after discovering that the older man had put himself to bed and fallen asleep quiet early on. Then Kevin had gone outside into the back yard to practice kata with Ikeda, with Deb watching from the side appreciatively. The intricate dance-like exercise routine was calming to her, even when Ikeda added yet another step or two into it.

Behind her, Kevin took a deep breath and then stirred slightly, rousing as he felt the weight on his arms. He tightened his arms around her gently, then smiled to himself when he felt her put her arms on top of his and hold him back. "Hey," he murmured in a sleepy slur.

"Hey," she slurred back at him.

"I could get very used to this," he told her and then dropped a delicate kiss on the back of her neck.

"Mmmmm… I intend to get very used to this," she replied, shivering at the light touch. "Of course, it means I'm just that more likely to want to sleep in late…"

"I don't think so," Kevin chuckled in a low and mischievous voice. He rolled just enough so that he could see the numbers on his alarm clock. "It's eight already — I'll bet you Sydney's already up, and Jarod will be over within an hour."

Deb sighed. "Can't I just enjoy being with you again for a little while before we have to get up and face the day?"

"Feeling lazy today?"

"Uh-uhn," she replied, rolling until she was facing him within the circle of his arms. "Just contented and not really ambitious yet." She wrapped her arms around his neck. "I love you, you know…"

"I love you too." Kevin relented a little and cradled her gently in his arms. It wasn't such a bad idea after all, just lying her and enjoying being with her again with no restrictions, no barriers between them. "I don't know what I ever did without you."

Deb laid her head against Kevin's chest and smoothed her hand down his ribs. "I just have to figure out how to tell my dad about us… about how it is with us now… and then I'll feel like I can be completely happy."

"You'll figure it out," he reminded her and kissed her forehead. "And I'll be right there with you."

"Are you sure?" She held her breath — this self-assurance in the face of potential anger was new. Miss Parker had offered to go in with her and help her tell her father of the developments in her life, but Kevin…

He nodded. "I'm sure. Everybody knows except your dad — and I'm going to have to face him sooner or later. When are you going to tell him?"

"He gets his cast off today," she mused in response. "Depending on how well that goes, and whether or not he shows any signs that he's going to walk again, tomorrow, maybe — or when I take Grandpa in on Thursday again for therapy."

"The sooner, the better," he replied and hugged her closely. "C'mon now. We'd better get up before Jarod gets here — I'd like to be at least dressed when we start getting visitors today."

Deb groaned but let Kevin push her into a sitting position. "Slave driver," she called jokingly over her shoulder.

Margaret knocked on the door to Ginger's room softly. "Sprite? Can I come in?"

There was no answer, so she pushed the door open and peeked her head inside. Ginger was sitting on her bed amidst the tumbled covers, clutching Bear to her and rocking back and forth just a little. "Can I come in?" Margaret asked again when she saw that the dark eyes had noted her intrusion. Ginger nodded slowly, and Margaret stepped into the room and closed the door gently behind her.

"Your Daddy told me what happened," Margaret told her as she walked slowly over to the bed and then sat down very cautiously on the edge of the mattress. "I thought you weren't afraid of your Mommy anymore."

The dark eyes gazed into at her grandmother for a long time without speaking or moving, and then looked down and picked at a small tuft of fuzz on Bear's chest. It was hard to explain why, even after Daddy's reassurances and even Her subdued reaction, she was still feeling the way she was. What was more, if Gamma was in here talking to her, she must be in trouble for running away after all. A tear began running down a cheek. "Me sorry, Gamma," she managed finally in a very soft voice.

"Now, now," her grandmother said gently and reached out to her. "You just come here and sit with me and tell me what you think you need to be sorry about."

Ginger thought for a moment and then slowly unfolded her body to crawl into her grandmother's lap and let herself be pulled close. "Me make Daddy feel bad," she explained with a sniffle.

"How did you do that?" Margaret asked kindly. Jarod had been afraid of this kind of reaction and the subsequent withdrawal that could follow. He had reminded his mother of the near catatonic state he'd found the girl in when he'd brought her home with him from the shelter, worrying that this episode could trigger another extreme response like that. At least the girl was talking to her, she thought gratefully, and maybe she could help the situation a little.

Ginger pressed hard against her Gamma's chest and felt the safety of the arms around her. Here, at least, was someone other than Bear to whom she could confide all her secrets. "Me tell Him me not wanna have a mommy," she replied. "But Him say Him love Her, so me gonna have a mommy anyway…"

"Why don't you want a mommy, Sprite?"

Finally the dark eyes looked up, and they were nearly unreadable through the pain and fear that floated behind them. "Me tell Him a'ready, Gamma – me say Him mommies hurt. They make preten' be nice for while, and then…"

Margaret's heart went out to a child for whom the one person she should be able to go to for comfort and security had been rendered into a monster. "All mommies are like this?" she asked gently, working hard to keep her voice even and unaffected.

Ginger nodded. "Me have t'ree mommies – all them hurt me bad. Me no wanna have 'nuther mommy hurt me 'gain."

"I know about these," Margaret began, touching the girl's arm on one of the little round scars from the cigarette burns, "and I know about what the last mommy you had did to you before your Daddy came for you. And you told me once about the Big Man you said used to come into your room – but how did that mommy hurt you?"

"Me try tell her 'bout Big Man come my room, only her not wanna listen. Her…" Ginger's open hand whipped out in a vicious slapping motion.

"And you saw your Mommy do something like that to Daddy this morning," Margaret mused aloud, now understanding more fully, and Ginger nodded to confirm her theory. "Did you ever tell either Daddy or Mommy about what this mommy did to you?"

The little girl thought for a moment and then shook her head. "Me scared, Gamma," she said then, raising frightened eyes. "Maybe Daddy not wanna have a Sprite no more…"

"No!" Margaret said emphatically and held the girl tightly. "Your Daddy loves you more than he loves just about anybody except your Mommy and Davy – he's not going to want to push you away. He wants to help you, you and Mommy…"

"Her walk 'way too," Ginger told her grandmother soberly. "Her not wanna have little girl no more eaver."

"I don't think so," Margaret shook her head and then kissed her granddaughter's forehead. "You told your Daddy that you didn't want a mommy – I think maybe you made her very sad to hear that, but I bet she still wants you."

"Me scareda Her, Gamma," Ginger admitted.

"Have you ever really talked to her?" Margaret asked gently. "Have you ever talked to her the way you and I are talking now?"

"Her not wanna…"

"You don't know that, Sprite," Margaret reasoned with her. "Has she ever said she doesn't want to talk to you?"

"No… but…"

"Sweetheart, did you ever think that maybe your Mommy is scared of you too – scared of frightening you, scared that you'll never learn to love her as much as she loves you?" Margaret didn't stop to wonder at her defense of a woman she'd despised for years as she struggled to get a little girl to give her adoptive mother the benefit of the doubt. This was her son's family she was defending. "Did you ever stop to think that maybe she doesn't know how to show you how much she loves you without scaring you?"

That was a thought that had never occurred to the child. "Her? Scareda ME?"

"Mmm-hmm," Margaret nodded. "And there's something else that I think you need to know." Ginger's dark eyes were wide and obviously paying close attention to her. "You say ALL mommies hurt?" The child nodded. "But I'M a mommy, Sprite – I'm your Daddy's Mommy, because that's what makes me your Grandma. Have I hurt you too, then?"

That thought stunned the little girl. Gamma was right – she WAS Daddy's Mommy. And here was a mommy who HADN'T hurt her – ever. Next to Daddy, Gamma was the one person who made her feel safe in the world and the only person who knew her secrets other than Bear — and he didn't count.

Margaret could see the impression her little bombshell had made and decided to press the lesson home. "So can you tell me that ALL mommies hurt you? Really?"

"But you a Gamma…" Ginger struggled with the concept.

"A Grandma doesn't get to be a Grandma without being a mommy first," Margaret insisted.

Ginger clutched Bear to her as the idea began to penetrate. "NOT all mommies hurt?" she finally asked in a very small and insecure voice.

"Sweetheart, MOST mommies DON'T hurt their little girls," Margaret told her emotionally, stroking her hair and holding her close. "Most mommies take very good care of their little girls and protect them from the bad people who would hurt them. You've just had the most horrible luck in finding three mommies who were different and did hurt you – but now you have a good one that would take care of you just like your Daddy does. She loves you, Sprite. I know it's hard to believe, with everything you've had happen to you before, but I think you need to give her another chance."

"Her not hit Daddy hurt him?" Ginger had to ask. That was, after all, the thing that had made her question Her intentions again…

"No," Gamma answered with a slight smile. "Sometimes when a Mommy and a Daddy love each other very much, they play rough-house. I think that's what your Mommy was doing, because she and your Daddy were best of friends when they were little kids and have always played together like that."

It HAD been play, then, just as She had said and just as Daddy had said. Ginger thought through the events of the morning and found her mind catching on the expression on Her face when she had told Daddy that she didn't want a mommy. If Gamma was right, She loved her – and to hear that must have hurt Her a lot. The dark eyes began filling again. "Me sorry, Gamma," Ginger said even more sadly, with a lower lip that trembled.

"Sorry about what, Sprite?"

"Me make Her feel bad." The more she thought about it, the worse Ginger felt. She knew very well how it felt to want to love someone and only get pushed away or hurt in the process – and here and she'd done it to someone else. "Me not mean it," she whimpered finally and pushed her face into her grandmother's blouse.

"I know, sweetheart," Margaret cuddled her miserable little granddaughter. "But I'm not the one you need to be talking to. You need to tell that to Mommy, don't you?"

"Her gone now," Ginger cried with a choked sob. "All my fault…"

"She's just gone to work, Sprite," Margaret soothed her with voice and gentle hands. "She'll be home tonight again – you can talk to her then, OK?" She waited, but then knew that she wouldn't be getting an answered anytime soon, for Ginger was crying softly. Was it possible the child was crying for her new mother? "You want to talk to her before that?" Ginger nodded against her blouse without her sobs diminishing at all. "Hush then – don't cry anymore – and I'll see what I can do to bring her home for lunch."

"Really?" Ginger pushed herself away to stare up into her grandmother's face in wonder.

"Let's go downstairs and call her and see if we can reach her at work, shall we?" Margaret wiped at the tears that were still streaming onto the small cheeks.

"'Kay," Ginger wiped at her face with Bear's soft head and felt her grandmother put her on her feet and then place a hand on her shoulder. "Where Daddy? Him gone too?"

"He's gone over to talk to Grandpa for a while – he'll be back after a bit."

Ginger swallowed and nodded. She needed to tell Daddy that she was sorry too. She'd do almost anything to wipe away the expression of sadness and disappointment that had been all her fault. Maybe he wouldn't stop loving her then…

Sydney's sharp eyes could tell that something had happened. Jarod's chocolate eyes didn't have that animated sparkle that they had ever since he'd come home to stay. "What is it?" he asked as his former protégé made the final adjustments to the CPM therapy machine controls before turning them on.

"Nothing major," Jarod sighed and pressed the On button to begin the morning's therapy session. "Missy and I were goofing around and spooked Ginger – and now she won't have anything to do with Missy again."

Sydney lay back into his pillows. "You knew there would be occasional setbacks, Jarod," he counseled with the tone of a university professor. "Ginger, from what you've told me, was very seriously damaged long before she came into your care. She's made good and steady progress until now – and she probably will again, since much of what she needed was a sense of security and a loving environment. However, do you know how she was spooked? What happened?"

Jarod nodded. "Miss and I were rough-housing a little – I think it sparked a very unhappy memory for her." He glanced at the older man. "Seems that a lot of bad memories have been triggered lately around here," he commented, grateful for the opening to steer the conversation away from Ginger and Missy and back to the subject at hand. "Speaking of which, did you get a chance to think about what we talked about yesterday?"

"I've thought about it, yes," Sydney admitted. "But thinking about it and accepting it as the truth are two entirely different things."

Jarod nodded. He'd been afraid that Sydney wouldn't make this process any easier. He'd have to try another tack. "Missy told me that you had that long talk with my mother that she came here to have with you."

"Yes."

"Well?"

Sydney looked away. "Your mother is a remarkable woman, Jarod…"

"That much I knew already. Tell me something I don't know."

"She told me she was willing to share you with me." Sydney smiled at the recollection. "I still don't completely understand how she got from hating me to that point…"

"Don't you?"

Sydney glanced at Jarod guiltily and then looked away again.

"What all did she ask you?"

"About what you were like growing up – about what it was that happened to you when you were still in the Centre under my care…"

"How much of that did you tell her?" Jarod was concerned, although his mother hadn't acted all that distressed when he'd seen her yesterday evening. She'd asked him several times over the years to tell her what he'd been through, and he'd managed to avoid upsetting her by not letting her know just how difficult his life had been. He could only hope Sydney had protected her for much the same reason.

"She wanted to know about the process – and when she asked for specifics, I told her that no good would be served to drag that up again. I did tell her how some of the worst of it came about, however… how they'd wait until I was gone…"

Jarod nodded and breathed a silent sigh of relief. Sydney had told her nothing but the unvarnished truth, and yet told her enough to satisfy her. Evidently unvarnished truth was enough to disarm a great deal of animosity from a number of quarters. "What else?"

"She asked about Nicholas."

"I'm not surprised." Jarod nodded. "She wanted to understand you – and I wanted her to see that you would understand HER better than she expected." Sydney nodded slightly and gazed up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "And you still don't understand why she doesn't still hate you?"

"I hate me, Jarod. I detest knowing that I was so complacent, so smug in my scientific bubble…"

"Stop it."

Sydney blinked and looked over at his protégé. "I was those things, Jarod," he insisted quietly. "I may have changed later, but I WAS those things at first. And now to find out that I was nothing more than another manipulated creature of the Centre, TAUGHT to be that way in order to inflict pain on another…"

"But you aren't those things now, Sydney," Jarod told his former mentor very firmly, "and you haven't been for a very long time. "When the truth began to come out, you stayed anything but smug or complacent."

"That doesn't make a difference…"

"Of course it does!" Jarod leaned forward from his seat on the coffee table. "You cannot expect yourself to be anything but human, Sydney. Humans make mistakes – sometimes huge and nasty ones – but the only time a human deserves to be condemned for BEING human is when he or she refuses to LEARN from those mistakes. I think it's pretty obvious that you did learn from yours."

Sydney gave him a frustrated glance. "You're just trying to make me feel better."

"No, I'm not! Look, I had to find a way to forgive myself for all of the knowledge that I used at the Centre's behest that ended up being used to hurt others. And to do that, I had to look at ALL the circumstances involved — and to do so honestly, without the emotional filters that only gave me pain. The fact is that I DIDN'T know how the information was being used, or else I was deliberately lied to and told by the Centre, through you, that it would only be used to help. Once I found out the truth, I changed the situation – I learned from my mistakes and took steps to remedy the problem to the extent that I could. I took a good look at myself and decided that I am not fundamentally a bad person. Neither are you, if you took the time to look at yourself objectively."

"But…" Sydney began softly.

"No — no more 'buts.' It's time to forgive yourself, Sydney," Jarod urged gently. "I forgave you a long time ago, when I finally forgave myself. It was the good man within you that kept all those mementos of me because you had cared more than you should have. It was the good man within you that never REALLY completely cooperated in the search effort for me – both of those things were steps you took to remedy the problem to the extent you could. What was done in the past is past, Sydney. I've made peace with it, knowing that had I not lived through it, I wouldn't be the person I am now. You need to do the same. This constant self-castigation for deeds long past doesn't accomplish anything. Let it go once and for all."

"I've tried," the older man admitted, his face falling. "I haven't been able to."

"Then I want you to do something for me," Jarod said, sitting up straight again.

"What?"

"Before you start to shave in the morning, I want you to look yourself in the face in the mirror and tell yourself that you are a good person who deserves to be forgiven. I want you to look yourself in the eye and don't look away for a while." Jarod could see the idea wasn't a comfortable one. "Can you do that for me?"

"Simple affirmations?" Sydney was astounded.

"Stop psychoanalyzing your own therapy, and physician heal thyself," Jarod tossed back. "The reason so many use affirmations is because they actually do work. If my assurances that I've forgiven you won't convince you, maybe the time has come to let you convince yourself. Will you try? Please?"

Sydney closed his eyes. He had nothing to lose except maybe this sense of being damned for all eternity. "I'll try," he promised, not sure how he'd be able to do as asked but determined to at least give Jarod's advice a try. "I'll try."

"That's all I can ask at this point," Jarod nodded in satisfaction and then rose. "Now, I need to get back home and see if I can talk to my little girl."

"Good luck," Sydney wished him earnestly. "And if things start to settle down, you can tell Maggie to bring her over about two or three this afternoon, and I'll see about testing where her academics were ended so I'll know where to start her tutoring. Maybe I can get her to talk to me about what happened."

"I'll do that." Jarod put a comforting hand on Sydney's shoulder. "And thanks. I'll see you then."

"Thank you," Sydney said softly, putting a hand over Jarod's. Having his protégé's forgiveness had made his burden lighter — as he'd known it would. Jarod was right, maybe the time had come for him to forgive himself now that Jarod himself no longer held him to blame.

Jarod simply smiled and patted Sydney's shoulder. The chestnut eyes weren't quite so troubled today as they had been before. Perhaps, at last, he'd made a dent in his mentor's guilt complex. Only time would tell.

The intercom buzzed, interrupting Miss Parker's study of a new research project prospectus. "Yes?"

"Maggie Russell is on line one for you, Miss Parker," Mei-Chiang announced in a voice that clearly communicated her worry.

"Thank you," Miss Parker clicked off the intercom and reached for the phone. "Maggie? What's the matter? Is something wrong with Sprite? Is she OK?" she demanded.

"Relax, she's fine," Margaret reassured her future daughter-in-law. "But she wants very much to talk to you — and I told her I'd see if I could convince you to come home on your lunch break."

Miss Parker let go a sigh of relief and rested her forehead in her hand. "Maggie, she didn't exactly want anything to do with me when I left," she told the older woman tiredly. "As a matter of fact, she was scared spitless of me and wouldn't let me near her."

"I know. Jarod told me what happened — but I've just spent the last few minutes talking to her, and she does want to talk to you now. And I think it might be a good idea for you to come home and hear what she has to say." Margaret looked down into the anxious dark eyes staring up at her. "Please. This is very important, or I wouldn't be bothering you at work to ask."

Miss Parker looked up at the clock on her wall and then down at the prospectus. "Are you sure she actually wants to see me?"

"Very," Margaret tried to put her most influential tone of voice forward. "In fact, I'm fairly sure that she'll be a basket case if she has to wait until evening — at which time, I don't know if you'd be able to get anything out of her. Missy," she dropped her voice to a very intimate tone, "she needs you here — not for very long, but as soon as possible."

"What does Jarod say?"

"He doesn't know about this yet. He went over to talk to Sydney a while back and hasn't returned yet."

Miss Parker looked at the clock once more and sighed. "I have meetings all afternoon that I really can't miss out on, but I was just reading up on a contract… Let me grab my purse and tell Mei that I'm out of the office for the rest of the morning and I'll be home as soon as I can."

"You'll be glad you did," Margaret assured her, looking down into eager eyes and nodding. "We'll be waiting for you."

Miss Parker hung up the phone and closed the folder over the pending project prospectus. She reached into a bottom drawer for her purse and then rose to head out the door. "If anybody needs me, I'm out for the rest of the morning," she announced to her secretary.

"Is the little girl all right?" Mei-Chiang asked with her eyes filled with concern.

"I think so — but I need to go home for a little while," Miss Parker replied. "Hold down the fort for me while I'm gone, and just take messages. I don't want to be disturbed. I'll be back in time for my afternoon meetings, I promise."

"Yes, ma'am." Whatever was going on, Mei-Chiang knew it must have been important, for her boss' face was a study in determination.

Miss Parker drove the quiet seaside road from the Centre to Blue Cove in a thoroughly distracted state. Maggie had said that Ginger wanted to talk to her — but Ginger DIDN'T talk to her hardly at all, unless it was absolutely necessary. The few hugs she'd had from the girl had been almost reluctant ones; and on Sunday, Ginger had not felt safer after Sydney had called out and she had come in answer. Their relationship had come to a complete standstill in limbo. She'd been at a loss as to how to break the impasse, and then this morning, had broken it in the worst possible way…

She nosed her comfortable sedan into its customary spot in the driveway and walked briskly up the sidewalk to the front door. She pushed the door open and looked around inside as she shut the door behind her with a practiced heel. "Anybody here?"

"She's upstairs." Margaret was already half down the stairs at the sound of the car in the driveway. "She's in her room, waiting."

"Maggie…"

"Go on," Margaret urged, putting her hands out to take purse and car keys from her. "I'll waylay Jarod when he gets home so that you two aren't interrupted before you're ready." When Miss Parker looked past her up the stairs, Margaret knew she'd described the woman to her granddaughter properly. Missy WAS scared —scared to death of losing the battle for her new daughter's affections. That she had come home immediately told of just how much that battle meant to her. Missy needed encouragement too. "Just give her a chance to say what she needs to say — and try to talk to her. She'll need some help to do that."

Miss Parker nodded and started up the stairs. She stood for a long moment before the closed bedroom door before knocking and then pushing the door open so that she could look in. "May I come in?" she asked the little girl sitting Indian-style, folded into a tight little knot with her back against her headboard and with her teddy bear clasped tightly to her chest. She could feel the pressure of the dark and wary gaze as she crossed the room and sat down very carefully and precariously on the edge of the bed, folding her hands primly in her lap. "Grandma said you wanted to talk to me," she began quietly.

Ginger nodded again and swallowed hard. "Me sorry," she said in a small voice. "Me not mean make oo feel bad."

"It's OK," Miss Parker replied in surprise. "I frighten you in the best of times, and then I did something stupid that scared you even more. You didn't make me feel bad so much as I made myself feel bad for scaring you. You didn't have to call me home to apologize, baby. You didn't do anything wrong."

"Me say bad t'ing…" Ginger tried again. "Me say all mommies hurt, and don't wanna mommy. Make oo feel bad." She chanced a quick glance into Her face, then looked back down again at the top of Bear's head. "Me not mean it."

"Yes, you did — but I don't blame you," Miss Parker answered. "I understand. I told you, my real Daddy hit me too and made me scared. I spent a long time wishing I had another Daddy before your Grandpa took his place."

Ginger frowned at her inability to get Her to admit that she'd been wrong to say the things she'd said — and at the complete lack of animosity. Most mommies would have been furious by now… She caught herself. Gamma said most mommies WEREN'T like that. Maybe this strange and gentle sadness was just more proof that Gamma was right. "Gamma say mos' mommies not hurt, that me jus' gots bad luck." Her grey eyes wore a startled expression, and She had nothing to say to that. "Gamma telled me hers a mommy too, and her not hurt me — so maybe real not all mommies hurt." The dark eyes peered into the grey eyes imploringly, pleading silently to be understood.

"Grandma's right, not all mommies hurt," Miss Parker reinforced, struggling to maintain her composure. "Most don't."

"Why some mommies do hurt then?"

The question took Miss Parker utterly aback. "I honestly don't know, baby," she answered truthfully. "Some people just don't know how not to do bad things, I guess."

"You had good mommy?"

Miss Parker smiled in remembrance. "Yes, Sprite, I had a wonderful mommy."

"What like have good mommy?"

God, what a question, Miss Parker thought to herself, to wonder what it would be like to have a mother who didn't abuse. She blinked hard to keep the tears at bay. "She was a very special person, and I loved her so much…" She caught herself before her emotions could fly out of control, took a deep breath and set about answering the question. "My mom used to read to me, talk with me about everything in the world, do my hair… We would laugh and take long walks and have fun." She looked down into Ginger's dark and unreadable gaze. "She loved me more than anybody else in the whole world did, and she was the most important person in my world when I was small. When she went away, I was lost — completely lost."

Ginger listened carefully and found herself wishing that she'd had such a mommy. "Why my mommies all mad me all time, and yell and make fires out on me and hit…" She made the vicious slapping gesture again, making Miss Parker blink in surprise.

"Your mother did that?" She was aghast — no wonder Ginger had reacted so strongly and so badly to the horseplay.

"Me do somet'ing wrong maybe?" Maybe this lady with the good mommy could tell her what she'd been doing wrong to get all the bad mommy stuff. "Make them not want me?"

"No, of course not!" Miss Parker forced herself not to reach out to the girl for fear she'd frighten her again. "None of it was your fault, Sprite, none of it!" A tear finally escaped before she could swallow or blink it back. "I wish I knew how to make you believe me."

"Oo mad me?" This question was in a very tiny voice.

"No, Sprite, I'm not mad at you. I love you." Miss Parker's voice cracked. She wasn't lying. This tiny girl had wormed her way into her heart, and she wanted nothing more than to put her arms around her and love her the way her mother had loved her and keep her safe from now on. To be held at arm's length like this was agony.

Ginger's mind was running wildly. Gamma had been right to insist that she talk to Her — She definitely was nothing like those other mommies from before. Ginger looked up into the sad face with the tear-filled grey eyes wistfully. "Me wish me have good mommy, even jus' for little while," she whispered, barely daring to voice this deepest of secrets. Even Bear hadn't ever heard that one…

Miss Parker blinked. This was an opening — a tiny one, but there. "Let me try, Sprite? Let me show you that I can be a good mommy for you and take care of you the right way? Please!"

Ginger fingered Bear's shoulder, where She had carefully doctored and made him whole again. She looked up and around her room, at the huge dollhouse in the corner. And then she returned her gaze to the woman at the edge of her bed that sat with hands folded together so tightly the knuckles were turning white. "Oo really wanna Sprite 'tay oo an' be fambly?"

It was such a wistful, heart-wrenchingly unsure question. Miss Parker wondered that this child had survived as long as she had without knowing the security of being loved unconditionally. Jarod had given her a taste of that kind of security — would she ever be willing to accept such things from a mother too, after everything she'd been through at the hands of women who didn't deserve to be called mothers? Not sure that she wouldn't do more harm than good at this point, Miss Parker unclasped her hands and reached out slowly. "Yes, I want that very much. I want a Sprite for my little girl, and I hope maybe Sprite would want me for a mommy — to give me a chance to show her that not all mommies hurt."

Ginger's heart skipped a beat. She said She wanted a Sprite! She looked down at the expanse of bedspread between them. It was just a short distance to Her lap — but to make it, she would have to leap over the distrust and fear that had grown from years of hurt and betrayal. "Me scared."

"I know you are, baby. I am too." Miss Parker stretched out her hand just a little more. "But I don't want to be scared anymore, though. Do you?"

Slowly, as she had with Gamma, Ginger moved across the bed until she was close enough to be touched. Miss Parker put her hand on the little girl's shoulder gently and then waited for a long and fragile moment. Ginger sat very still beneath the gentle touch for a long moment, amazed that She wasn't reaching out greedily and hauling her in and noting that as yet another difference between Her and those other mommies. Finally she rose to her knees and made her way across the bedspread until she could seat herself on the waiting lap, whereupon gentle arms closed around her tightly. It was a surprise to find out that She was weeping openly as She kissed the top of her head over and over again.

No, this was not another mommy like the others. Her hands were gentle, like Gamma's, and the way She was holding her made her feel safe, just like with Daddy and Gamma. Ginger wanted so badly to believe that maybe, finally, she could begin to trust that she didn't have the strength to resist anymore. She leaned against Her and closed her eyes tiredly and breathed in the soft scent that was uniquely Hers. "Mommy," she whispered, trying the word out for the first time in years as something other than another name for hurt.

"I'm here, baby girl," Miss Parker crooned softly into dark hair in a breathy, broken voice. "I'm right here. You're safe now, Mommy's got you." She leaned her cheek against the top of the little girl's head. "Nobody's ever going to hurt you again, I swear it. They'll have to get through me first"

Ginger caught her breath — that had been much the same promise Daddy had made to her when she'd become his little girl for real. Nobody else — certainly none of those other mommies — had ever promised her such a thing. The feeling of relief and safety that flooded her was overwhelming. "Mommy," she whimpered again and began to cry the cry of a child who, once lost, was now found.

Miss Parker felt the iteration of the name to the bottom of her soul. "I'm here, baby," she soothed again and again to a child who was now clinging tightly. "You're safe now."

Jarod stared up the stairs for another countless moment, then resumed his pacing. "Are you sure?" he demanded.

"They need to talk when there's nobody else there, Jarod," Margaret told him in an understanding voice. "Ginger wants to make things right with Missy, but doesn't know how. If Missy can get her to talking, maybe they can get through this and come out stronger when they're finished."

"What did she tell you when you talked to her?"

Margaret eyed him sympathetically. He was acting like a worried father, not a pediatric psychiatrist — his emotional proximity to the situation had caused all his training to fly right out the window. "How much do you know about what happened to her… before?" she asked in return.

Jarod blinked. "Only what was in the police reports when I first took her case," he replied finally. "She wasn't talking at all back then, remember?"

"Then you need to pay special attention to what she told you this morning. She said, 'all mommies hurt.' She's telling you that all of the women who were responsible for her care ended up being abusive. Her real mother burned her with cigarettes, her first foster mother hit her when she tried to tell her that she was being molested, and her…"

"What?" Jarod gaped. "She told you that?"

"With a very vivid demonstration of being slapped hard with an open hand," Margaret nodded seriously. "She's been terrified of women because all of the women she's ever known have hurt her or yelled at her. All of them who were possible mother figures, that is. I slipped through because I'm too old to be a mother to her — I am Gamma, not Mommy."

"So when Missy took a swat at me…"

"Ginger saw her as being like all the rest," Margaret finished the thought. "She's only seen such things in terms of pain before — never horseplay. She didn't know — and saw it the only way she could."

"So how did you get her to…" Jarod pointed up the stairs impotently.

"I reminded her that I WAS a mommy — and that I hadn't hurt her. That made her rethink her absolute 'all mommies hurt' and consider the facts in a new light." She put her hand on his arm. "In the end, she was scared of losing your love, and that now that she's starting to consider that Missy isn't the ogre she thought she was, she was afraid that Missy wouldn't want her either. That's why I called Missy home. If we'd waited until the end of the workday, I'm pretty sure she would have withdrawn just like you were afraid she would."

"How long have they been up there?" Jarod sighed.

"About a half hour or so," Margaret answered. "C'mon. Your pacing down here isn't going to make things up there go any faster. I made some more coffee…"

"Jarod…" Miss Parker's soft voice from the top of the stairs had his complete attention immediately, and his jaw dropped. She was walking down the stairs very slowly with Ginger in her arms, the little girl clinging tightly and with her face buried amid the dark hair at her neck. Miss Parker's face bore the signs of recent tears, but her expression was a combination of tenderness and triumph. "Sprite," she called gently as she reached the bottom of the stairs, "here's your Daddy."

The little head turned and puffy dark eyes peeked timidly out at him. "Daddy mad me?" she asked in a small voice.

Jarod shook his head resolutely. "No, Sprite, I'm not mad at you. Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Me sorry me say t'ings make oo feel bad," Ginger stated sadly. "Please, Daddy, don't 'top love an' make me go 'way…"

"I would never do that, fairy child," Jarod soothed, stepping close to both of the women in his life and putting his arms around them both, placing Ginger between the two adults. "That's not how a real family works, Sprite." He kissed his little girl on the tear-stained cheek. "I love you, and I love Mommy, the both of you, more than you can know. I love Davy the same way."

"See? I told you he wouldn't be angry," Miss Parker soothed at her, her eyes seeking out and locking with Jarod's.

He leaned forward just enough to give her a gentle kiss on the lips and then turned back to his little girl. "Family is a forever thing, Sprite. You're stuck with me, I'm afraid." He smiled at her.

"'Tuck with Mommy too?" Ginger allowed her hope to color her voice.

"Absolutely," Miss Parker's arms tightened just a little. "Which is just fine with me. How about you, Daddy?"

"You bet. Whatcha say, Sprite?"

"'Kay." Ginger leaned her head against her new mother's shoulder. "Mommy 'tay us resta today?"

"No, baby, I have to go back to work after lunch." Miss Parker kissed her forehead again. "But I'll be back this evening, after you've had some time over at Grandpa's. I'll always come back for you and Davy, I promise that too."

Ginger rolled her face back into the neck and clung just a little more tightly again, unwilling to let go of this new and good mommy quite so soon. Miss Parker tweaked her head towards the living room and a long couch on which the three of them could sit together for a while, and Jarod nodded and let her lead the way. Miss Parker's gaze then landed on Margaret's, and she mouthed a silent "thank you" to the woman who had finally broken down the walls behind which her daughter had been hiding. She felt the warmth of Margaret's answering smile, then saw the older woman turn away and head toward the kitchen, giving the three of them some privacy.

"Hello?"

"Em? It's Mom."

"Mom! How are you! How are things on the other end of the world?"

Margaret smiled to herself. "Interesting," she answered. "I just got lonesome for the sound of your voice, and I thought I'd give you call and see how you were doing…"

Feedback, please:


	31. Last Gasp

Resolutions – 31

Last Gasp

by MMB

"You're looking a little more sane this afternoon," Sydney told Jarod as Ginger clambered up into an easy chair across from him, Bear securely in tow as usual.

"I'm feeling a little more in control of things," Jarod admitted in return. "Missy came home for lunch, and she and Ginger reached an understanding." His face broke into a wide and pleased smile. "Actually, they made a break-through."

"Did they really?" Sydney smiled wide in return. He glanced over at the child in the easy chair, occupied with her teddy bear. "That's good to hear. Maybe you can tell me about it later?"

Jarod nodded, not really wanting to discuss it with Ginger right there in the room with them. "Listen, I thought I'd give Kevin a hand going through the archives while you do your thing with Ginger," Jarod pointed toward the living room. "But before then, is there anything I can get for you…"

"As a matter of fact," Sydney pointed at a shelf of one of the bookcases that ringed the room. "There are some Dr. Seuss books that I could use over here, to see just what level she's learned to read — if at all."

Jarod fetched the books Sydney wanted and then turned and bent over his daughter. "I think Grandpa's going to want you over there closer to him," he nodded in the direction of the couch. "Let's see how good you do for him today, shall we? He's going to help you get ready to go to school with Davy, you know…"

"'Kay, Daddy," Ginger answered, hopping down from the easy chair and walking over to where her grandfather was waiting to give her a hug. "Where you go now?"

Jarod smiled gently at the sign that she was already beginning to correct her speech. "I'll be out in the living room with Kevin. And when you're done, we'll go over to the park and see about those swings, OK?"

Ginger nodded vigorously. Daddy waved at her and she waved back, and then he walked back into the kitchen on his way to the living room.

Sydney moved a little on the couch so that Ginger could have a place to sit next to him. He celebrated quietly when she seated herself next to him without the slightest hesitation or reservation. "Now, let's see if you can remember your alphabet for me. Do you think you remember that song…"

"A, B, C, D," Ginger began obediently in a slightly off-pitch voice, encouraged by the nodding of the silvered head as she remembered each of the letters in sequence. It had been a long time since she'd thought of such things…

Jarod heard the faint sounds of his little girl singing her alphabet and broke into a contented smile as he rounded the corner into the living room.

Kevin looked up from his latest wad of papers. "You look happy today," the young Pretender observed.

"It's been an up and down day — right now, it's mostly up," Jarod nodded and found a place on the long couch. "So… Where are you and where do you want me to start?"

"You? Start?" Kevin was confused.

"Yeah," Jarod answered. "Since Sydney's going to be taking time to work with Ginger, getting her ready to go back to school, I thought I'd pitch in and help out with the big job you two have been doing." He shrugged. "All the sooner to get this stuff out of the living room, right?"

Kevin nodded slowly, grateful. The sooner this job was done, the sooner Sydney would begin to retrain him to be a proper Pretender. "You bet! I've got Project Silverfish right now — you can take the next one on the stack."

Jarod tipped his head to read the label on the folders. "Project Basura," he read, then looked up. "That's 'garbage' in Spanish. You wonder sometimes what went through the minds of those responsible when they gave names to some of these things…"

Broots lay very still as the thoroughly vicious-sounding saw vibrated its way through the plaster of Paris cast that had been his prison for weeks. He had looked forward to this moment with both anticipation and dread — for now he would actually discover just how much more he would be able to recover, rather than just lie in bed and speculate about it. The doctor had sounded hopeful when he had reported on the last set of x-rays, but made no secret of the fact that there was still a chance that spinal damage had happened. Not knowing for certain had been definitely wearing at him over the last few days. Now, at least, the not knowing would end one way or the other.

The saw suddenly stopped, and the nameless technician had simply appeared in Broots' room unplugged the saw and put the device back on the rolling table on which he'd brought it in. Carefully, then, he lifted on the upper right side of the cast, and with a crunching sound, the top right quarter of the cast peeled away, leaving Broots' skin open to the air for the first time in weeks. As the top left quarter was similarly removed, Broots got his first whiff of body odor, and was grateful that, no matter what, one of the first things that would happen to him now that the cast was off was that he'd get a sponge bath. He needed it!

Now, suddenly, there was a male nurse assisting the technician in rolling him up onto his left side slightly so that the bottom right quarter of the cast could be removed, and then carefully the same movement was made to the right — and he was free. The nurse pulled a light sheet up over his naked body while the technician packed the discarded pieces of cast into a container hooked to the cart.

"There you go," the technician said with a contented smile. "Now, don't let me catch you dancing in the corridors here for a while."

"You just watch out," Broots quipped back. "I'll be winning footraces against you in no time."

"I hope so, buddy," the technician said, clapping a hand on the patient's shoulder and then getting a grip on his rolling cart. In just a moment, Broots' liberator had slipped from the room.

"Good afternoon," Doctor Kasparian announced briskly as he pushed through the door almost before the door had closed completely from the technician's departure. "I see I'm just in time for the unveiling." He put the metal-cased chart on the roll-around table and smiled down at his patient.

"You missed it, actually," Broots remarked, keeping his spirits deliberately high. "My cocoon has already been taken away."

"Had the bath yet?"

Broots grimaced. "Nope. And I know for a fact that I haven't smelled this bad since falling down in the cow pasture after a rainstorm."

Kasparian chuckled. "Well, before we get you all pretty-smelling and human again, I thought I'd check your feet — see whether we have any muscle activity down there. You do want to know if you're going to walk again…"

"Moment of truth, huh?" Broots asked nervously, watching the thin man in the white physician's coat carefully pull up the bedclothes from the foot of the bed and uncover the pallid feet.

"Do you feel this?" Kasparian asked, running the capped end of a ballpoint pen the length of the bottom of Broots' left foot and noting the lack of reflexive response with some concern.

"Nope," Broots replied with a small frown.

"How about this?" The ballpoint traveled the length of the bottom of the right foot.

Broots concentrated. "I'm not sure," he answered that time. "Do it again." The physician obliged. "I think so – a little…"

"How about this now?" Kasparian ran the ballpoint over the top of the foot toward the ankle.

"Yeah," Broots answered this time with a smile. "I can feel that for sure!"

Kasparian put the right foot down and repeated the test with the left foot. "And now?"

"Uh-unh." Broots looked up into his doctor's face in concern. "What does that mean?"

The doctor didn't reply immediately, as he was repeating the test for reflex action once more on the bottoms of both feet to confirm what he suspected. Indeed, there was the tiniest of reaction from the right foot, and none from the left. He put both feet back into a comfortable position on the mattress and covered them again to keep them warm.

"Doctor?" Broots pressed again, a little bit more worried. "Is there a problem?"

The orthopedic surgeon who had done the repair work on Broots' pelvis opened the medical chart and made a few notes, then closed the chart and looked at his patient with understanding and sympathy. "The good news is that your spinal cord was not completely severed. Chances are that you'll regain control and use of your right leg with therapy. I'm going to order a few more tests, however, to see whether what we're dealing with here is damage to the left sciatic nerve. Your pelvis was far more shattered on the left side than the right – and it is possible that your left leg will remain numb and unresponsive."

"Does that mean I'll be in a wheelchair?" Broots asked bravely, seeing his dreams of being able to be as mobile and energetic as he had been before evaporating before his eyes.

"Not necessarily," Kasparian shook his head. "There are a number of options that could return some sensation to the leg that we can consider once we know the extent and exact location of the damage. Even if it doesn't, there are always the options of braces with or without a crutch that would get you back on your feet, even if not exactly graceful or fleet of foot." The doctor's hazel eyes were sympathetic. "I know that this is a disappointment, Mr. Broots – but you have to consider that this isn't the worst possible outcome."

"I know that," Broots sighed in disappointment.

"I'm going to leave now so that you can have that bath you both need and want, and I'm going to schedule you for that battery of tests I told you about to start first thing in the morning. I'm also going to get you started with our physical therapy department tomorrow, because you WILL need to start building up muscles that haven't exactly been all that active lately. You'll need to begin building upper body strength and stamina because, until we get you up on your feet again, you'll be in a wheelchair for the time being."

"How soon can I get out of here?" Broots asked next, deciding that he wanted to know as much about his near future as possible.

"Depending on the results of the tests and your therapy to get you ready for life in a wheelchair in the short term, maybe a week – possibly two." Kasparian put out a hand that Broots then shook. "Hang in there a little longer with us, Mr. Broots. I'm certain that we'll have you on your feet again – just not as quickly as I'd hoped we would."

Broots stared at the rises in the sheet that were his feet for a long time after the doctor left, trying to will them to move. His brow creased with concentration, but his feet remained utterly motionless.

Only when the nurse returned, this time with a basin of steaming water and an assortment of towels and washrags, did Broots let up on his efforts. As the warm cloth was run carefully and efficiently over a body that had been starved for the touch of anything but the padding within the cast, he deliberately focused his mind on the sensations of being washed and clean again. The nurse caring for him didn't deserve to become the target of his frustrations.

He'd wait until he was alone again before he started pounding his fists into his pillow.

"I do not want green eggs and ham, I do not want them, Sam-I-Am," Ginger intoned slowly and carefully, her finger keeping her place in the book. She looked up into her grandfather's face expectantly. "Right?"

"Veeerrrry good, Sprite," Sydney grinned and gave her another hug. "You're doing a wonderful job remembering for me."

"Me can read more, Gampa?" she asked brightly.

"In a little while," Sydney said, setting the book aside within easy reach for later. "Why don't you go get me that little box on my desk there," he pointed, indicating a small, wooden box sitting innocuously on the desk in the corner of the room.

Ginger slipped off the couch and trotted obediently over to bring back the desired item. "What this?" she asked curiously, handing over the box and slipping back into her spot on the couch next to her grandfather. She smiled contentedly as she felt him pull her close again. She was growing to like Gampa a lot – almost as much as Gamma – and her ear was becoming accustomed to the musical way in which he spoke that was different than the way everybody else did.

"Open it," Sydney suggested, putting the box in her lap.

She gave him a quick and startled glance and then looked down as her fingers found the side of the box with the hinge and opened the other side. Inside the box were stones – shiny, red glass stones – lots of them. "Rocks, Gampa?" she asked in confusion.

"Count me out ten of them," Sydney directed gently. "Put them in my hand and count out loud as you do."

Ginger carefully did as her grandfather had asked, counting "One, two, t'ree, fo, fi, six, sem, eight, nine, ten," slowly and depositing each stone in his open and waiting palm.

"Veeerrry good," Sydney smiled at her. "Now, take two of the stones out of my hand and put them back into the box." He waited for her to follow instructions. "Now, can you tell me how many stones I still have?"

"Eight," she answered immediately, then grinned. "Me liked nummers in 'kool before," she explained happily. "Me good nummers."

"Yes, you are," Sydney replied, adding an encouraging hug. "OK. Put those two back in my hand…" he waited, "…and now put ten more in, and keep counting up from ten. Eleven," he modeled as Ginger's fingers started adding new stones to the pile he was holding.

"Twel', t'irteen, fo'teen, fi'teen, si'teen, semteen, eighteen, nineteen, twenny."

"VERRRY good!" Sydney beamed at her. He carefully poured his handful of stones back into the box. "Now, can you put the stones in my hand two at a time and count up by twos?"

Ginger complied, and counted correctly by twos all the way to twenty without error.

"How are we coming in here?" Jarod's voice sounded from near the door, and Davy pushed past his father to get to his grandfather and sister.

"Grandpa! Sprite! Whatcha doing?" the boy asked, pulling to a halt and looking at the box of stones and his sister slowly handing them into his grandfather's hand.

"Gampa he'p me 'member nummers, Davy," Ginger explained with eyes that sparkled happily. "An' he'p me 'member reading."

"I think that will be all for the day," Sydney sighed contentedly. "I'll bet your Dad can make you both a snack, and then you can go out and play in the tree house until your Mom gets here."

"Mommy come here?" Ginger responded immediately, turning excitedly.

Sydney nodded, watching the pleased look that was on Jarod's face as the little girl realized the sequence of events that was to come. What was more, he suddenly realized, Ginger had called Missy 'Mommy' instead of 'Her' – which was definitely progress.

"Davy, why don't you get yourself and your sister two cookies and take them outside," Jarod suggested. "I'd like a chance to talk to your Grandpa for a bit."

"We go park too?" Ginger asked, remembering her father's promise from before.

"Sure, Sprite – after I talk to Grandpa. Davy can come too, if he wants – or if he doesn't have too much homework." Jarod jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "But go get your cookies before your Mom gets here and decides she doesn't want you spoiling your supper…"

"'Kay, Dad," Davy replied, grabbing his sister's hand and pulling her into the kitchen with him.

"That IS progress," Sydney commented as he closed the top of the box and set it on the coffee table. "Was she calling her 'Mommy' before this?"

Jarod shook his head. "No, not at all. You should have seen her, Sydney, hanging onto Missy like her life depended on it."

"Considering the way you said the day started, that's a big turn-around. What happened to change things?"

"Mom talked to Sprite," Jarod explained, "and reminded her that she was a mommy too."

Sydney's brows furled. "What did that have to do with it?"

"That's right — I never told you Ginger's complete story, did I?" Jarod asked. Sydney shook his head. "Well, it seems that every woman who was responsible for Ginger's welfare before now has been abusive to her in one way or another. Her birth mother was the one that burned her…"

"What?" Sydney was shocked.

"Haven't you noticed the scars on her upper arm?" Jarod saw his former mentor shake his head slowly. "Maybe she's been wearing longer sleeves lately. Anyway, her birth mother burned her repeatedly with cigarettes, and then she was placed in a foster family where the father molested her and evidently the mother, when Ginger tried to tell her what was happening, hit her to keep her quiet."

"Mon Dieu!" Sydney looked over the back of the couch and watched Davy hand his sister two of the packaged sandwich cookies and then lead her toward the arcadia door and the tree house beyond. "And this is why she stopped talking."

"That started it," Jarod confirmed. "Her last foster mother was verbally abusive because Ginger was starting to withdraw — and that just drove her even deeper into her silence. She's afraid of big men because of the molestation, but terrified of women because they all either abused or abetted abuse by others. When Missy took a swat at me yesterday morning, Ginger saw it and interpreted it as simply more of the same old same old. Mom dug it out of her, and convinced her to look past surface appearances by reminding her that SHE was a mommy and that SHE hadn't hurt her – and that Missy hadn't either."

"Missy must have done more than that to have Ginger ready to give her the benefit of the doubt, though," Sydney shook his head. "A child that badly damaged doesn't let go of an effective defense mechanism or fear without plenty of good reason."

"Sammy tore an arm off of Bear, and Missy repaired it for her when she was in California," Jarod told him. "I think that was the biggest thing. I think there have been other, smaller, things that have been slowly adding up, but that was the biggie."

"And Missy is pleased with the way things worked out, I hope?" Jarod's face wore the answer without need for words. Sydney smiled. He'd known that his foster daughter had had the potential to be as good a mother as her mother had been for her; her taking over the care and raising of Davy had only proven that to him. For her now to have a little girl to love and cherish the way Catherine had cherished her would heal a great many wounds that had gone long without attention or balm. "I'm glad, Jarod. It looks as if you've finally found that family you always wanted."

"Oh yeah!" Jarod's face was ecstatic. "And I even have both halves of my family talking to one another now. Mom and Missy get along so well, and now you and Mom are getting along well enough…" Sydney's face softened unexpectedly at the mention of Margaret Russell, and Jarod had to struggle not to let his surprise show. "Oh yeah?" he repeated, this time unable to repress his astonishment.

Sydney glanced at his former protégé with something akin to embarrassment and then cleared his throat. "I simply think that your mother is a remarkable woman, that's all," he protested. "I told you that already."

"If you say so," Jarod rose and patted Sydney on the shoulder as he walked by, quietly pleased. "You feeling like taking a short walk over to the park and playing with a couple of kids for a little while?"

"I feel like walking over to that bench not far from the duck pond and watching a couple of kids entertain themselves," Sydney responded, grateful for the change of subject. "If you can help me get out of this damned gizmo…"

Dr. Ezekiel Cavendish was the quintessential old-school psychiatrist. His office boasted a warm polished-wood décor that included the traditional leather-covered couch, with a chair slightly to the back so that he could sit out of his patient's sight during therapy. He'd served many years with the Centre mostly doing counseling for the employees themselves. Because of the paranoid attitudes of those in authority, however, his files had been rifled through so many times by those looking for God only knew what about whomever that he'd virtually given up being able to keep them in order before the change in administration. Now a mild stroke had made his retirement imminent and correcting that filing problem a necessity.

The process of trying to make some kind of sense of over fifty years' worth of practice there in the Centre was a long one. He'd sought and then been given permission to ask for help from the clerical department for a file clerk flunky to come down to his office and help with the sorting and cataloging that needed to happen before his retirement date of January first rolled around. A month after the request was originally filed, the woman in charge had finally seen fit to release into his den the most delightful and patient of youngsters he'd had the pleasure of working with for years. Crystal was bright, capable, and easy to talk to. She was politely interested in the many stories he had to tell — and a lonely old man with virtually nobody to keep him company had thoroughly enjoyed their time together the previous day.

Today, however, Crystal seemed quieter, more reserved. It had been much more difficult to pull even a soft smile from her, much less get her to chuckle. A couple of times Cavendish had caught her staring off into space over the open file cabinet drawer — just as she was doing right now.

"You know, I may be old and almost infirm, but I can spot a depression a mile away," he stated at last, crossing his hands over his thin chest and frowning. "You've been too quiet today, young lady."

Crystal blinked and blanched. "I'm sorry," she blurted hastily and worked at focusing her attention back on the files she was resorting. What was wrong with her? She couldn't afford to disappoint Doctor Cavendish…

"Listen to me," Cavendish said softly, walking up next to his temporary assistant and putting a gentle hand on an upper arm. "You've got something eating away at you — I can tell. Maybe if you tell me what it is…"

"It's nothing, really," she replied with a firm shake of her head. "I'm sorry."

"It's not nothing, and you know it," he disagreed with her. He took the files from her hands and put them on the top of the cabinet, led her over to that leather couch and sat her down — then sat down next to her. "What is it?"

"I really should be working…" She tried to rise, but the skeletal hand at her arm wouldn't let her go.

"Young lady, neither of us is going to get a lick more work done until you answer my question," Cavendish announced in his high-pitched voice. "What has put that dark cloud over your pretty head today?"

She cast a guilty and apprehensive glance into the old man's watery blue eyes, unsure of whether she could trust him or not. "Just between us?" she asked cautiously. "You won't tell anybody else?"

"And just who would I tell, my dear?" he smiled at her encouragingly. "Of course it can stay just between us. You've been my temporary secretary — think of me as your temporary shrink, with everything you say to be kept completely confidential."

Crystal's shoulders sagged. "I found out today that my father has been arrested," she blurted out finally, unable to keep it to herself any longer.

"That's not good," Cavendish nodded understandingly.

"No, you don't understand. That's almost miraculous," Crystal contradicted him instantly. "My father is not a nice person — he DESERVES to be in jail for what he's done over the years."

Cavendish looked closely at the girl's face. "Things he's done to you," he surmised and said softly.

"Among other things," she nodded. "I just haven't thought about him for a while. And once I did, I started to wonder about my mom — whether she's still OK or if he's…" She closed her mouth before she could say more, but Cavendish was no less astute than she would expect any other psychiatrist to be.

"And you're worried about her?"

She nodded slowly. The not knowing whether her mother was alive or dead — or in what shape she was in — had indeed been eating at her all day to the point that she had considered walking away from the Centre during lunch and heading north — toward home. Only knowing how much Doctor Cavendish was depending on her, and how much Sydney would be disappointed in her if she just up and vanished, had brought her feet back to the elevator into the sublevels after lunch.

"How long has it been since you've seen your mother?" Cavendish could tell that the topic of Crystal's parents was a sensitive one, but one that she desperately needed to air with someone before it made her do something rash.

"Almost two years," was the soft reply. "I ran away the night of my sixteenth birthday."

The psychiatrist quickly did the math in his head and then raised bushy silver eyebrows at her. "Does Miss Parker know that you're underage?"

She nodded. "She knows my dad used to knock me around — she though that if she let me just quietly work here until after my eighteenth birthday, it would be legal for me to be out on my own and he couldn't…"

"Ah." Cavendish nodded slowly. So much for the consistent rumor over the years that Miss Parker was an Ice Queen with no heart. Rescuing employees trapped underground could be written off to preserving the bottom line – but not THIS. "But now…" He gazed with knowing blue eyes into her still-bruised face. "Now, maybe, you need to go home?"

Crystal shook her head. "I'm afraid if I do that, and dad ends up getting bailed out, he'll find me again, and…" She shook her head again. "I can't let that happen." She gazed up into the friendly watery blue gaze pleadingly. "There's got to be some way that I can find out what I need to know without Dad finding out…"

"Have you thought to talk to Miss Parker…"

"Oh no!" Crystal shook her head vehemently this time. "She's such a busy person, I don't want to bother her."

"I know," the old psychiatrist began to beam. "You're a friend of Sydney Green, aren't you? We'll call him and see if he'd know someone to talk to."

"Dr. Cavendish…"

"No." He shook his finger at her and pointed at the couch. "You stay put and let me see what I can do." The old man rose and went over to his desk and sat down to flip quickly through his Rolodex, then dialed the phone. He listened for a bit, then hung up with a frown. "Hit his answering machine — he must be out."

"I'll be OK," Crystal told him in what she hoped was a reassuring tone. "It's just that I guess maybe I needed to talk to someone." She rose and went back over to the filing cabinet. "And it's getting close to quitting time — so let me see if I can finish this one drawer."

"You'll be back tomorrow, won't you?" Cavendish asked pointedly. "You won't just be up and taking off for home again, will you?"

"I won't leave you in the middle of this," she replied, waving her hand at the various pieces of office furniture that were still piled high with files. "I'll be here tomorrow — you can count on it."

As she blinked hard to get the tears out of her eyes so she could read the file labels properly, she knew that there was no way she wanted to leave. She was safe here — regardless of her mother's condition or whereabouts, if she wanted to remain safe, she needed to stay where she was. She didn't dare trust that her father wouldn't get out somehow — and heaven help anyone who crossed him after that!

"Callie! Come here right now!" Tom Jackson bellowed the moment he slammed through the front door of the townhouse. It had taken hours to get through the booking process to finally demand his phone call that had gotten his lawyer scurrying — and the arraignment where he had been formally charged and made bail by virtue of his very public office had been just a little while earlier. Obviously his idiot of a wife hadn't done as he'd told her to do, and so now she was going to have to pay. The silence within the dwelling was almost echoing. "Callie?" he yelled again, moving swiftly through one room to another, finding each just as uninhabited as the next.

She was gone.

Jackson ran frustrated fingers through his short hair, feeling the driving need to put his fist through something and only having walls and furniture in any position to supply targets. Where the hell WAS she? She knew that she wasn't allowed out of the house when he didn't know where she was going or how long she intended to stay out. Damn it…

His eyes hit the telephone, and he picked up the receiver, hit redial and listened. "South D.C. Women's Shelter," answered a voice on the other end of the line.

"I'm sorry, wrong number," Jackson growled and slammed the receiver back into the cradle. How dare she! No doubt she was spilling her guts to some bleeding heart counselor about how tough she'd had it. First Karen had run off and now Callie thought she could get away with doing much the same…

A lamp crashed into the opposite wall and shattered the mirror hanging here, and then a bookcase was pulled away from the wall and its contents dumped onto the floor. Jackson upended the heavy coffee table with a feral growl and sent it tumbling into the couch. A bouquet of flower that normally graced the foyer table smashed into the smaller panes of glass in the front door, shattering vase, windows and sending water and foliage all about the place. Jackson looked about him at his handiwork, panting, and then stomped through house to his office, where he sat down at his computer and stared at the white screen of his journal program and began typing.

As his psychologist had long suggested and he'd resisted doing for so long, he suddenly found himself pouring his anger and frustration into the keyboard. The words poured out of him in a vitriolic regurgitation of real and imagined slights, betrayals and outright contradictions. He let go of all of his inhibitions against letting anybody have the opportunity to find out his REAL inner thoughts, and named the names of those who had caused his misfortunes: his wife, Callie, his daughter, Karen, that damned FBI agent, Berghoff – and, of course, that Parker bitch.

When the words finally had finished falling from his mind through his fingers into the computerized journal, he simply got to his feet and walked away from the machine and made his way out the back end of the house into the garage. He threw the car into reverse and spun the tires peeling out backwards until he could aim it down the narrow alley toward the street.

By God, she'd pay. She had to come out of that place sooner or later — and, by God, he'd be waiting for her. And when he was done with Callie, maybe he'd have the chance to go after that damned Miss Parker too. After all, it was SHE who had ruined everything for him…

"Come on Daddy — make me swing high!" Ginger cried as her father's hands settled against her back again and gave her another push.

"Bet I can go higher than you," Davy crowed, on the swing next to her pumping as hard as he could.

Margaret had walked over to Sydney's after she'd called each of her family in California except Ethan, only to be directed over to the park by Kevin. She'd found Sydney sitting on the park bench and joined him without a word and watched the antics with a light heart. Now she glanced over at the man sitting next to her on the park bench and found him watching the activity near the swing set with a very paternal kind of pride. "He's got quite the family now, doesn't he?"

"Mmmm," he grunted, nodding. "He's got everything he's ever wanted in life — he found you and Charles, his sister, Ethan, Jay, and now he has Missy and the children to make life complete." He was finding it a pure delight to watch the scene in front of him. Jarod was completely at ease, playing with the children, laughing a kind of carefree laugh that he'd never been allowed in all his years in the Centre. He was a completely happy and fulfilled man — everything Sydney had ever wanted for his protégé. The old psychiatrist glanced over at his companion on the bench and found her now studying the trio at the swings. "You know, I've been quite remiss — I haven't yet told you how sorry I was to hear about Major Charles' death. That must have been very hard for you."

"Everything ended too soon," Margaret admitted, not taking her eyes from her son and his children. "I had been happy at last, with Charles and Emily and the boys. But, you know," she turned to face Sydney, "I'd spent the greater share of my married life by myself — raising Emily alone because I didn't dare come out of hiding long enough for Charles to find me. By the time Jarod put us together as a family again…" She fell silent for a while. "It just wasn't the same. We'd lost something in the years on the run, Charles and I..."

"I know what you mean," Sydney nodded quietly, returning his gaze to the swing set. "When I finally found Michelle, and her husband died soon after, I was hoping that we could begin again. But like you say, it just wasn't the same between us. We had changed as people over the years — and even though I still cared for her, there was something missing."

"When Charles died, I thought I would too for a little while. It wasn't fair that I'd just found him and had him quietly in my life the way he was supposed to have been all these years only to have him die so soon. And then Jarod left almost the moment Charles was in the ground — off to find you." Margaret studied her hands. "God, how I resented the fact that he had another family to go to — someone who could comfort him and make up for his loss while I was left alone! When he'd call, I'd make his life miserable — begging him to come home again."

"I remember," Sydney said softly, glancing down at her. "There was a stretch of time when he genuinely didn't know which way to turn. He knew he'd promised you that he'd go back to California. But he was falling in love with Missy and finding out that Davy was his son in fact, and as soon as that happened — and it really was inevitable, Maggie — I knew he'd want to try for a life with her."

"I almost lost him," Margaret said very softly. "I was so selfish, only thinking of how I was all alone without Charles anymore — never thinking that I had Ethan and Jay and Emily around me. It was like I was right back to a time eight years ago — missing my husband AND my son."

"Don't be too hard on yourself," Sydney told her gently. "Just a few years of a so-called 'normal' life isn't going to overwrite the feelings of decades of doing without. When suddenly the situation changes so that that which was missing is missing again, it would be natural for you to fall back into old attitudes and feelings. You'd miss your husband all over again in new ways…"

"But that's the thing. If I'm honest with myself, I have to admit that I'm not missing Charles the way I should. By the time we took up our married life again, we'd grown apart in a lot of ways. I loved him — but not the same way." She paused, suddenly realizing to whom she was speaking. "And I haven't got the foggiest idea why I'm telling YOU this…"

"Maybe because I've been there too in a manner of speaking too," he replied gently. "I was never allowed to have a married life with Michelle — never allowed to know my son — and when the time came that such a thing could happen again, I discovered that she'd grown away from me and I from her. We are still very fond of each other — we talk by phone often — but I know that I will never have that kind of place in her life again. And Nicholas has made his own life, one that includes me only very peripherally. He and his wife Kate have decided not to have children, so this…" he waved his hands at Jarod and the children at the swings, "is all I have — and it isn't really mine."

She was quiet for a long time watching Jarod thoroughly enjoy the opportunity to play with both of his children. "What I am finding really strange is that I feel I know you, better maybe than I should in just the few days of our acquaintance," she finally stated carefully. "Jarod is so much like you in so many ways, that I can almost predict some of your gestures or reactions or ways of saying things."

"I can see you in him too, now," Sydney returned. "Some of the expressions that come over his face are you all over again. You couldn't deny him as your son to save your soul."

She smiled and looked into the craggy face of the man she'd hated for so long. It was spooky — he was so much like Jarod, or Jarod so much like him, that Margaret could feel her emotions tangling dangerously. What was wrong with her, she berated herself, she'd just lost her husband — a man with whom she'd waited for decades to be reunited. How dare she allow another man to catch her attention in this way so easily and quickly! But having grown used to her son and his mannerisms in the last few years, how could she NOT find herself helplessly captivated by the very same mannerisms in what was evidently the original. And those golden-brown eyes of his were like pools that she could get lost in — and his voice…

Sydney was finding it very hard not to fall into and lose himself in those brilliant blue eyes that looked up into his with such intelligence. In Margaret, he was finding a kindred spirit the likes of which he'd never expected, along with an echo of Jarod that he could now see was the benefit of genetics. Being fond of the son, he was finding it difficult not to become just as fond of the mother. What was wrong with him, he chided himself harshly, the woman had just lost her husband only a few months earlier. How dare he even consider…

"This is dangerous," Margaret murmured when she noticed that the two of them had apparently leaned in closer to each other during that long and silent moment just passed.

"Unwise indeed," Sydney agreed, trying to find a good reason to move away and not coming up with anything other than the fact that he hadn't really known this lady for but four short days. "I think we're both rather vulnerable right now."

"I know we are," she replied, searching her soul for something that would make her move away from the warmth that he represented. What would Charles say if he saw her now? No, not even that worked, for the only thing she could hear in her husband's voice was "he seemed to be a good and decent man, Maggie…"

"Gamma! Gampa! See me go higher than Davy!" Ginger called out to the two on the bench in an excited voice.

"We see you, cheri," Sydney called back with a chuckle that turned into a silent tug of air when Margaret's hand landed on his arm.

"Good for you, Sprite!" she called out in her turn, then turned another smile on Sydney only to find him watching her with chestnut eyes that were warmer than she'd expected.

"This is very dangerous, Maggie," he warned her with his voice hitting a lower register, and then very carefully and deliberately covered her hand on his arm with his other hand. "And at our age, we should know better."

"Perhaps," she agreed tentatively, enjoying the warmth of his hand over hers. "Then again…"

Jarod stepped back from pushing Ginger on her swing and let his eyes wander to where his mother and Sydney were sitting together on the park bench a short distance away. He grinned suddenly when Sydney lifted a hand from covering his mother's hand on his arm and carefully brushed a tendril of red and silver away from her face. His mother immediately tossed her head saucily and smiled and said something that made his old mentor grin from ear to ear. It was good to see those two getting along so well — and to see that Sydney had found a way to make his mother sparkle in a way that he'd never seen before, not even before his father died.

"Look, Daddy, Mommy comed!" Ginger exclaimed and immediately began dragging her heels in the soft sand to slow herself so that she could jump from the swing and run. "Mommy!" the girl called and then was caught up in waiting arms.

Yes, Jarod thought to himself as he listened to Davy slowing his own swinging now so that he'd be able to greet his mother properly, he had finally come home. This was what he'd always wanted — the woman he loved, two children he adored, his mother, his siblings, his mentor…

"You're looking inordinately pleased with yourself," Miss Parker told him with a mischievous smirk as she walked over to him with Ginger perched happily in her arms and Davy at her side after his hug.

"I've decided I've got everything I could ever had wanted in life — and then some." He tipped his head and led her to turn and look across the green to the park bench where Maggie and Sydney were now involved in a very animated discussion. Maggie now obviously had her hand tucked into Sydney's arm, and his other hand was very clearly holding it in place there.

Miss Parker turned back to Jarod with eyebrows flying high. "Whoa," she commented softly. "Your mom works fast. I underestimated her."

"Sydney's not exactly being uncooperative there, if you care to notice," Jarod protested with a smile. "I have to admit, this is something I hadn't seen coming."

"C'mon," she twitched her head now. "Let's see where we're all eating supper tonight. I think it's my turn to cook…"

David Lawler sat back and surveyed his handiwork after hitting the save button. This would definitely set the record straight as far as what the public needed to know about the Centre — and would probably give Whisper Man fits. Using nothing but the Centre's own documents, he had systematically and very definitely put the responsibility for all of the shady dealings detailed in the previous article exactly where it belonged: squarely on the shoulders of Mr. Charles Parker and Mr. — formerly Dr. — William Raines.

He opened up his email client and then pulled from his pocket the business card that Miss Parker had given him — the one with her corporate email address printed on it. He copied the article he intended to have published in the next day's morning edition and shipped it off to her. She should be pleased, he smiled to himself. As he had promised, everything that he had threatened in the last article he'd put in its proper place with this one.

As he was sending it off to his editor, the phone rang. "David Lawler."

"Hi Dave. This is Chuck Evans."

"Chuck! I was starting to think that I wasn't going to hear from you again."

"I told you that this wasn't going to be a quick thing — but I DID finally get that information for you that you wanted."

Lawler picked up a pen and grabbed for a piece of scratch paper. "Shoot."

"You were in luck — I owed one of the directory assistance operators a dinner, and I took her to Chef Rick's after she brought me the information you wanted. You owe me forty-five bucks, man…"

"You'll get it, I promise. What did you find out?"

"The call to your phone at the time you gave me was placed from a townhouse in Georgetown."

"That's all?" Lawler was disappointed. "No name to go with it?"

"Oh no, I got a name. But my question to you is just why a Senator from Vermont would be calling you?"

"Say what?"

"Senator Tom Jackson was the one who placed the call you wanted traced."

"Wait a minute…" Lawler made a grab for the copy of the evening edition, the front page of which carried a follow-up story about the arrests of three Senators for conspiracy charges. "You mean the same Senator Tom Jackson that got his carcass hauled into jail for conspiracy charges?"

"The very same." Chuck Evans waited for a moment. "What are you going to do with this information?"

"I'm not sure," Lawler told him honestly, "but I intend to do something with it. Nobody plays me like that and gets away with it."

"Whaddya mean, plays you?"

"This Jackson fellow is the whispering voice I talked about in the article — the one taking credit for giving me the info on the Centre — and just wait until you read the follow-up that should come out sometime tomorrow!"

"More dirt on the Centre?"

"Not exactly," Lawler said bitterly. "Say, thanks, Chuck. I owe you one."

"You owe me one on top of the forty-five bucks for dinner," Evans reminded him pointedly.

"You know I'm good for it…"

"That's the only reason you got the info without my seeing the green first, my man. I'll be in touch."

Lawler replaced the receiver with a thoughtful motion. So here was even more proof that Jackson was in some kind of conspiracy — this one aimed at smearing the Centre and Miss Parker's good name. THAT was information that could prove very useful.

He just had to figure out how to use it to his advantage.

Jackson sat in the darkness of his car, staring moodily at the entrance of the South D.C. Women's Shelter and debating his next move. He knew better than to try to get into the building — in the first place, even he was aware of the locks on the door and the fact that nobody got in without being allowed entry. No, whatever he intended to do, it would have to be from the outside.

She had to come out sometime, he decided. Either to go somewhere else or to visit a shrink or some other bleeding heart service person, she'd have to come out this very door. He could wait. He wouldn't be expected at his lawyer's office until in the morning – with any luck, nobody would try to get a hold of him anytime before that other than perhaps Burns or Canfield, and right now both of them could go to Hell for all he cared.

It was all falling apart. There would be no putting the group back together to take care of the matters of national security that the administration couldn't take care of officially due to legal proscriptions. The military had managed to corral all of the best operatives that had been making their efforts such a success, and now even the group itself was under siege. It had to be that Parker bitch's fault, he told himself as he pounded his steering wheel with frustration. If she hadn't pulled the plug on all those projects, none of this would have happened.

The judge in the case had been very specific – he had been prohibited from leaving the D.C. area for any reason, not that this would stop him. Once he'd taken care of his traitor of a wife, he could make tracks to that little town in Delaware where his downfall had been engineered. Nobody interfered with his plans and was allowed to get away with it – and it didn't matter if that person were a wife or daughter or even a virtual stranger. The whole situation simply couldn't go unanswered.

Keeping his eye trained on the lighted doorway through which he was certain Callie would emerge eventually, he reached across the car for the glove compartment. The first thing he drew out was his gun – one he'd put there for self-defense a long time ago. With a grim expression on his face, he slipped the weapon into his pocket and reached again. This time he pulled out a silver flask that had been stored there at least as long as the gun had, if not longer. Jackson sighed as his nimble fingers twisted the top of the flask until it fell away on its protective chain and then took a healthy slug of the strong liquor within.

Tired, hungry, he felt the effects of the whiskey go straight to his stomach, warming him from within. He put the flask to his lips again and this time sipped a little more carefully, holding the liquid in his mouth for a while until the burning had abated somewhat. He screwed the lid back on and wiped his mouth with the back of the hand holding the flask.

It felt good, he decided as he felt the warmth of the whiskey gradually filling his entire body, that he had no intention of going to jail. He slipped the flask into the pocket next to the gun and allowed his fingers to follow the sleek cold steel of the barrel. He had no intention of giving anybody the satisfaction of trying to hold him accountable. He was a Senator, after all – accountable only to his constituency and to God.

Wait! He sat up straighter. There was movement within the pool of light just inside the shelter doorway and suddenly there she was – and with a suitcase in her hand to boot! Just where the Hell did she think that officer was going to take her that HE couldn't get at her? The door of the shelter opened slowly, and the officer took Callie's arm and was obviously leading her toward a waiting vehicle just across the street.

Jackson gunned the engine and started the car moving. He got the most fleeting of glimpses of his traitor-wife's terrified face just before she disappeared beneath his front bumper and the car bucked as the tires handled the obstacle in the roadway. He didn't bother to check to see whether he'd managed to hit the officer as well, but slowed just long enough to see that the dark lump that had been Callie wasn't moving before he whipped the car around the corner and off into the quiet of the D.C. night to continue his mission.

One down, one to go.

"Thanks so much for your help, Deb," Miss Parker said, retrieving the dish cloth from the younger woman.

"If you don't mind, I think Kevin and I will take off for home," Deb said with a smile. "IF I can pry Kevin away from that chess game he started with Jarod, that is…"

Miss Parker chuckled. "Just tell Jarod that I promise not to reset the men so that the two of them can continue the game the next time it's my turn to cook," she suggested. "I have yet to understand what it is about the men of this family and that damned chess board…"

"Don't you play?" Deb asked her curious. "I'm sure I've seen you play with Grandpa once or twice…"

"Of course I play. Jarod taught me the game when I was very young, and your Grandpa and I have played often over the years." Miss Parker shook her head and shrugged. "It's just that it never hit me before now how central that game has been to our family dynamics."

"You'll just have to get another board, so you and I can have a game too one of these days," Deb smirked. "I'll get Kevin to give me some pointers that maybe my Dad hasn't tried before…"

"You think so?" the older woman returned with eyebrows floating halfway to the hairline. "I'll get Jarod to give me some pointers that he's used over the years to beat Sydney. That should make us about even."

Deb extended her hand. "You're on, then," she offered as a challenge.

"And you're dead meat," Miss Parker told her, shaking the hand firmly and then looking around. "I wonder where your Grandpa got off to, if you're getting ready to leave…"

Deb walked behind her old friend into the dining room and then bent over Kevin's shoulder to study the board from his perspective. "Who's winning?" she asked after dropping a kiss on his cheek.

"At the moment, Jarod is," Kevin replied in a glum tone.

"I think your lady-love would like to steal your attention from the chessboard, Kev," Jarod told his younger counterpart with an indulgent smile. "How about we pick up this game from here the next time you're over?"

"I promised Deb that I'd make sure the men didn't get reset," Miss Parker noted as she moved past the dining room in search of Sydney – then stopped in her tracks and wished with all her heart that she had her camera. Sydney and Margaret were seated on the couch next to each other, with Davy tucked cozily in between them. Sydney was tenderly cradling a sleepy Ginger against his chest, while Davy was ecstatically plying his grandmother with some tale complete with animated gestures. But what caught her attention was the very fleeting and occasional look that the grandparents would share between them – and Miss Parker knew immediately that there was more going on between those two than would meet the casual eye.

"…and Mrs. Gantry told me today that I could work with the second graders, helping them learn their addition and subtraction, in stead of sitting around bored," Davy was saying with a wide and proud grin. "I get to be a teacher, just like you, Grandpa!"

"I'm very proud of you, Davy," Sydney said in a quiet voice intended not to disturb the little girl in his lap any more than necessary. "But what is Mrs. Gantry intending to do about your own math lessons?"

Davy shrugged his shoulders. "She said that she's never had any kid in her class that was handling quadratic equations already – that she'd have to consult the principal to see what was available." He gazed proudly into his grandmother's face. "Grandpa has me working algebra and some geometry – math is SO easy…"

"And your Grandpa's a good teacher, I take it," Margaret asked quietly, forcing herself to pay more attention to her grandson than the topic of discussion. Her eyes had been surreptitiously finding excuses to rest on Sydney already too many times that evening – if she didn't watch out, he'd have her pegged as being forward.

"The best!" Davy crowed with a proud glance back at his Grandpa.

"Are you done with your homework, young man?" Miss Parker asked, not really wanting to break up the cozy scene but knowing that the children's bedtime rapidly approached.

"Didn't have much today, Mom," Davy told her easily. "I did most of my essay at school already."

"Then up into the bathtub, young man," Miss Parker told him with a jerk of her thumb over her shoulder, "and then to bed. If you're going to be teaching others, you'll need your rest."

"Aw, mom…"

"Your mother's right," Margaret spoke up. "Teaching is a responsibility you can't take lightly. You can tell us all about how it goes tomorrow when you get home, OK?"

"Oh, all right," Davy conceded and then kissed his grandmother's cheek and accepted a hug from Grandpa. "See you in the morning."

"Here, let me take Sleeping Beauty," Miss Parker bent over Sydney and carefully pulled Ginger up into her arms without managing to let Bear drop out of the little girl's grasp. "I think your ride is wanting to head to the other side of town," she informed her foster father and then dropped a kiss of her own onto his cheek. "I'll say goodnight now, since I'll have my hands full here in a minute…"

"I'll see him out," Margaret offered without thinking about it.

"Thanks, Maggie," Miss Parker accepted with a smile.

Margaret rose and reached for the crutches that Sydney had leaned against the wall near the couch, then watched him struggle for a while before reaching down and grabbing an arm to help him to his feet again. "And this couch isn't even that much of a man-eater," she commented quietly as she handed him the other crutch.

"I've done a little more than I normally do in a day," he admitted with a sigh. "I don't normally take walks in the park – especially after three sets of those damned exercises the therapist has me doing now…"

"They're waiting for you in the car, Sydney," Jarod announced from the archway on his way up the stairs. "And I'll see you tomorrow morning – same time, same place."

"I'll have the coffee ready," Sydney promised, then returned his attention to the woman near him as they found themselves finally alone. "I want you to know that I've enjoyed our discussions this afternoon and evening," he said, not quite sure how to break through the awkwardness of the moment.

"I have too," she replied, looking down at the floor and then finally up into his face. "I hope that I haven't shocked you too much…"

"Not at all," he replied immediately. "And I hope that you don't think that I've been too personal…"

"No, no," she shook her head, then chuckled. "Look at us – tripping over ourselves like rank adolescents – this is ridiculous."

"Not ridiculous – I believe we agreed that this was dangerous," he reminded her in that deliciously lower register of voice, "and unwise."

"Well," Margaret decided to be the bold one and put her cards on the table first, "I don't know that that means we shouldn't… do you?"

Sydney's brows climbed toward where his hairline used to be. "Maggie, I seriously doubt that your family would approve of… this... You and I may have reached a point where we can leave our mutual distrust behind, but the rest of your family still views me and mine as enemies — and with good reason."

"I talked to Emily and Jay today," she told him quietly, matching her pace to his slow steps toward the front door, "and I tried to explain how wrong I – we – had been. They've accepted Missy and Davy, and I just wanted them to open their minds about you…"

"And they weren't hearing you, I take it," Sydney anticipated with a sad smile and then watched her shake her head slowly. "Are you really all that surprised?"

She shook her head again. "No, I suppose not. But that doesn't mean that I'm not going to ignore the reality I'm seeing with my own eyes – or see exactly what kinds of options I have now…"

"But you just lost your husband," Sydney started.

"I told you," Margaret interrupted him with a hand to one arm, "that things weren't exactly right between us. I loved him, and I do miss him greatly – don't get me wrong – but it's more like I lost one of my best friends, not the other half of my soul." The brilliant blue eyes peered earnestly up into concerned and warm chestnut. "Do you understand?"

"Maybe too well," he replied gently. "And so let me be the cautious one, making sure that neither one of us gets hurt. I refuse to be the cause of that for you now – you've had enough hurt for one lifetime…"

"From what I understand, so have you," she replied, moving closer.

"Mmmmm," he cautioned and then tsked at her softly. "Goodnight, Maggie," he stated very gently. "Will you do me the honor of bringing Ginger over to my house tomorrow afternoon – and maybe after the tutoring session, we can continue this discussion? I think it would be better that we leave well enough alone until after we've both had a chance to sleep on it…"

She nodded, appreciating both the wisdom and the caution. "Absolutely. Goodnight, then, Sydney." She tipped forward up on her toes just a little with the intent of giving his cheek a peck, but he moved just at that moment so that their lips actually brushed together very briefly.

Their eyes met in surprise, and then Sydney impulsively and contrarily bent to repeat the fleeting gesture very deliberately. "Until tomorrow, then," he said softly and then opened the front door and forced himself to walk through it without looking backwards. He had a feeling he wouldn't be getting much sleep that night – and this time, it wouldn't be because of nightmares.

He was playing with fire, and he knew it. He hoped with all his being that she realized it as well, because as it stood, they both risked getting burned.

"Senator Jackson?" Detective Simkins pushed the front door of the townhouse open and then stepped cautiously through the broken glass into the residence. "Senator? Are you all right?"

"Police officers, Senator," Detective Chesterfield announced, pulling out his service revolver at the lack of response and noting that his pony tailed partner now had her gun out as well.

Something had obviously happened here, and both detectives were cautious in checking the entire residence from room to room, only to find the place completely deserted and partially trashed. "I wonder what the Hell happened here," Simkins mused to herself, peering into what appeared to be the Senator's private office and then blinking to see the white of a computer screen still lit. She walked over and began reading.

"Hey, Greg," she called. "Look at this!"

Chesterfield joined his partner and both read what was on the computer screen with increasingly disturbed looks on their faces. Simkins was the one to look up first. "Well, I'll bet you that we now know who it was that ran Callie Jackson down in the street…"

"Yeah," Chesterfield nodded. "And we know where he's headed next."

"I'll call the FBI," Simkins pulled her cell phone from her jacket pocket.

"Better tell them to call the Centre in Delaware," Chesterfield recommended grimly. "This Miss Parker deserves to be warned about what may be coming her way."

Chet Harrington carried his coffee cup, now brimming with a new helping of steaming brew, into the security monitoring station that kept track of the first three sublevels' worth of labs. Two of the rooms in the underground structure were still occupied with scientists and researchers, and Harrington seated himself before the array of monitors and stretched back in his chair to enjoy what promised to be a relatively quiet evening.

Again.

Actually, he was beginning to enjoy the fact that the Centre was no longer on a continual alert status as the situation around it settled down. The shape of his job as it would be in a Centre where there was no intrigue or subterfuge ongoing would be that of nighttime coordinator of security resources – something easily manageable from this single post. And once the new Tower facility was operational, he would inherit a post much more centralized and powerful that even this one – from there he would be able to keep track of everything going on all over the property, from outdoors to indoors, from upper floors of the new Tower to the bottom of the underground structure.

The last thing he was expecting, therefore, was the telephone to ring. "Harrington, Security," he answered with a long breath.

"This is Assistant Director Berghoff of the FBI," came a tight and tense voice from the other end of the line. "I need to speak to whoever is in charge of security at the Centre."

"At the moment, that's me," Harrington replied, straightening into alertness. "What can I do for you, Assistant Director?"

"I need you to get a security contingent over to the residence of Miss Parker right away," Berghoff told him without any preamble whatsoever, "until the FBI can arrive."

"What the Hell's going on?"

Berghoff sighed. "We have reason to believe that someone is going to make an attempt on the life of your Chairman – possibly even tonight."

Harrington nearly choked on his sip of coffee.

So much for a quiet evening…

Feedback, please:


	32. Resurgent Darkness

Resolutions – 32

Resurgent Darkness

by MMB

"I'll get it," Sam called to Mei-Chiang and headed for the telephone on the nightstand. He picked it up. "Hello?"

"Mr. Atlee?"

Sam frowned and was immediately concerned. "Chip. What's up?"

Harrington gestured to the three sweepers who had just been called up from sublevel security stations. "I just got a call from an Assistant Director of the FBI warning us to put extra security teams on Miss Parker immediately. Seems they suspect that there will be an attempt on her life soon — possibly even tonight sometime."

"Shit!" Sam exploded. "How many men can you pull from below?"

"I have three standing here ready to leave with me as soon as I finish talking to you, sir," Harrington told his boss somberly. "Anything else you want me to do?"

"No," Sam shook his head. "I'll call over to Miss Parker's and warn them that we're coming, so that our landing there won't be that much of a shock. Don't wait for me to get back into the Centre — I'll meet you at the Parker house as soon as I can get there."

"Yes, sir," Harrington said and nodded to the trio in the security station. "I'm on my way."

Sam punched the disconnect button on the phone, waited a moment, and then started to dial. He changed his mind, started over and dialed another number entirely and then waited until a voice answered on the other end of the line. "Hello? Sydney? Sam. Is Mr. Ikeda there?"

The psychiatrist frowned in confusion. "Yes — let me get him for you." He called out toward the front of the house, and in very short order had the former ninja in the kitchen doorway. Sydney held out the receiver. "Sam wants to talk to you."

"Domo," Ikeda bowed as he took the receiver from Green-san. "Konban-wa, Atlee-san. What can I do for you this evening?" This was unusual, to receive a call from Parker-sama's Chief of Security. Something must be VERY wrong for Atlee-san to be calling HIM.

Sam could hear the alertness on the other end of the line and was grateful for it. "I need you to head over to Miss Parker's townhouse, and I need you there as of five minutes ago. We've had a call warning us of a threat on her life."

"I am there already," Ikeda replied immediately. "You will tell her of my coming?"

"I'm going to call her next," Sam assured him. "Get going now. Harrington will be there with three other sweepers as soon as he can get there, and I'll be along as soon as I call to warn them of the danger."

"Hai, Atlee-san." Ikeda didn't wait for Sam to disconnect, but handed the telephone back to Sydney and had vanished almost before the older psychiatrist could register his departure.

"Sam?" Sydney worried into the receiver. "What's going on?"

"Sounds like we have a crazy coming after Parker, Syd," the Security Chief told him curtly. "I'm going to call her and warn her of what's coming down, and then I'll be over there. I'll let you know if anything happens — but I want you and Kevin and Deb to just sit tight. Lock all your doors and windows, and for God's sake, don't let anybody you don't know in."

"Sam…"

"I know, Sydney." Sam was sorry to have worried him so, but there was no remedy for it now. "I'll call you, I promise. I've gotta go now."

"Take care of her for me…"

"I will." Sam once more disconnected the call and dialed again. This time when he put the receiver to his ear, Mei-Chiang had moved around the end of their bed and was standing beside him, her eyes filled with worry. He patted her shoulder gently as the phone rang on the other end of the line.

"Parker residence," Jarod answered eventually.

"Sam," Sam announced. "Harrington just handled a call from the FBI, warning of a possible attempt on Parker's life — maybe even tonight. I've got Ikeda heading your way, Harrington's bringing three more sweepers, and I'll be there in a bit — and the FBI is on its way."

"Shit — what brought this on?" Jarod demanded angrily. "Do you know?"

Sam shook his head. "I haven't the foggiest — I'm hoping this A.D. Berghoff is with the G-men heading to Delaware so we can find out. I'll see you in a few."

"Yeah," Jarod replied, distracted by the sound of the doorbell. "Listen, somebody's at the door. I'll talk to you later…"

"Hey Lab-Rat — I don't need to warn you that if you don't know them…"

"I know, Sam. I'll handle it." Jarod hung up the telephone and moved carefully to the front door and looked out through a deceptively clear spot in the etched glass. Then he was undoing the chain and opening the door. "Crystal? What are you doing here?"

"This wasn't my idea, Doctor Russell, honest," she complained as he allowed her and her companion into the house and then relocked the door. "Doctor Cavendish insisted…"

Jarod gazed at the elderly man who had hold of Crystal's elbow. "You're Doctor Cavendish, I assume…"

The old man did a double take. "Jarod? What the Hell…" He looked up as Miss Parker came down the stairs. "Miss Parker…"

"What's going on at this hour of the night?" She blinked. "Crystal?"

"Miss Parker, this is my fault," the old psychiatrist stepped forward and insisted in his high voice. "I convinced her to come here tonight — she didn't want to bother you, but…"

"But…" Miss Parker rolled her hands in a gesture that urged someone to get to a point.

"You have a very worried young lady here," Cavendish continued before Crystal could even open her mouth. "It seems that she heard a news report that her father had been arrested — and now she's worried about the welfare of her mother…"

"Your father!" Miss Parker looked at Crystal sharply.

"Yeah," the girl said after taking a deep breath. "He was one of three Senators that were arrested earlier…"

"You're kidding…"

"She's afraid to go searching for her mother for fear that her father will find her again…" Cavendish plowed right on ahead with his story. "I was hoping that if she could talk to you, maybe you'd have some idea…"

"Parker, we have bigger fish to fry than that. I just got a call from Sam — seems Harrington handled a call from the FBI warning of some nutcase coming after you, maybe even tonight. Sam's got Harrington and three sweepers on the way, and Sam said he'd be here too in just a bit…" Jarod flinched as there was another knock at the front door. Again he peered cautiously through the glass, and again he quickly disengaged the chains and locks to let in the newcomer.

Without saying a word, Ikeda walked through the knot of people in the foyer until he was directly in front of Miss Parker and then bowed. "Atlee-san called me and told me to come, Parker-sama. I am here to guard your life with my own."

Miss Parker stared around her at people who were looking at her and waiting for her to give them some kind of clue as to what to do next, only to hear a soft, "What the…" from Margaret coming down the stairs behind her.

"OK, people," she sighed. "Jarod, why don't you take Crystal and Dr. Cavendish into the living room and find out what they want. Maggie," she half-turned to the older woman behind her, "I need you to stay safe or nobody in California will ever speak to me again. Right now, I think upstairs would be the best place for you…"

Margaret would have complained, but an urgent glance from her son made her bite her tongue. "If you think that's best, then," she said reluctantly and headed back up the stairs.

"Ikeda-san, arigato." Miss Parker bowed to her personal ninja. "If this is as serious as the FBI wants us to believe, I am grateful to have you here with me." Ikeda bowed again deeply. "Jarod, I'm going to be in the library when Chip and Sam get here — have them come in there."

"Will do," Jarod nodded as he gestured for Crystal and the elderly man seeming glued to her side to take seats on the couch. "Now, start from the beginning and tell me what this is all about…"

Tom Jackson tipped his head back so that he could drain the rest of the flask of whiskey, then tossed the silver vessel over his shoulder and into the back seat. On the speedometer, the needle hadn't wavered much below eighty-five for the entire trip, and already he'd gone through the south end of Dover. A small sign on the side of the road was the only indication of directions to the tiny beach community known as Blue Cove. The swift correction that he made to head up the proper highway exit without having to double back cut off two cars who had to jam on their brakes to avoid hitting him. Behind him, the angry blare of car horns faded quickly into the distance as the sedan ate up the miles to Blue Cove.

He felt in his jacket and pulled the gun from the pocket. He kept his left hand on the steering wheel and used the other one to chamber a round and prepare the weapon for use. The documentation he'd looked at so many times before had given him the address for the Parker residence — no doubt the bitch had moved into the big house now with her advancement to the Chairmanship. He'd been there a few times to attend cocktail parties when Mr. Parker and Mr. Raines had been in charge of business there — finding the place wasn't all that hard. After all, there wasn't another house in Blue Cove half as big.

Without looking, he laid the gun back down carefully on the seat next to him. There was no telling what kind of security she had built up around the place now. But he was ready for them. He smiled grimly to himself. Nine chances out of ten, nobody would expect a car on the front lawn with bullets flying immediately. No security force would stop him from taking the kind of vengeance he knew rightfully belonged to him. And since he really didn't give a damn what happened to him, provided he took the bitch out with him…

Miss Parker sighed yet again and leaned forward once more to try to make herself comfortable in the stubbornly uncomfortable leather chair that had yet to acclimate itself to her body. Not that this was all that surprising — this had been her father's chair, after all. She looked around the stately room, more than aware that she'd sought refuge in her father's den — the one room in the house that had been specifically his and virtually off-limits to all the other members of the family. Many had been the time that she'd been asked to peek in to call him for supper and seen him sitting at this desk, doing paperwork he'd brought home from the Tower. When she was young, it had seemed an inviolate fortress for him — and maybe it was that memory from a gentler time when her mother still lived that had called her in here on this night.

She shivered. It had been a mistake to retreat into this room of the house tonight. She should have known better. Of all the places in this house to try to feel safe, to choose the one with the worst memories — well, one of the worst…

The few times that she'd actually been called into this room after her mother's death, it had been to answer for some mistake or errant behavior. Having to come into this room and walk up to this desk had given the phrase 'being called on the carpet' a dark and frightening meaning. No matter how old she had been, he had always seemed to tower over her when he would rise from behind this desk to scold her in a loud and frightening voice — more often than not with words that were then followed by blows from a fist.

The last time he'd hit her had happened the day after she had been angry enough at his decision to prohibit her from having a friend over to visit that she'd locked her bedroom door at night. She had been seventeen, home from boarding school only a couple of days and already dismayed and disgusted that he had quietly let her know that he intended to continue with the frequent late-night 'visits' that had begun very soon after her mother's death. Long talks with good friends at boarding school had clued her into just how wrong those 'visits' were — and she wanted to let him know that she wouldn't put up with that kind of abuse any longer.

She had walked into this room that afternoon, she remembered that very clearly. But a Centre medical team had been needed to carry her out. Her eyes studied the carpet and found the faint outline of the stain that had never been able to be cleansed from the expensive Persian rug. She'd spent two weeks in the Renewal Wing that time, and had been summarily shipped back to school as soon as she was discharged. She had never returned home after that — never spent the night in the same dwelling as he again — she had either stayed at school or been given enough money to keep herself occupied in one of the Centre townhouses that were scattered across the European map. When she'd moved into her mother's summerhouse, the first thing she'd done was having the locks changed.

Miss Parker shook herself from her dark reverie and glanced up at Ikeda in embarrassment, only to be comforted by the calm neutrality of the ninja's demeanor. If he had noticed her disquieting meditation, he didn't show it. She sighed and took a small key from beneath the blotter and turned it in the lock of the middle right hand drawer of the huge desk. Replacing the key, she pulled the drawer open and removed the wooden box that rested on top of the assorted papers. She hadn't needed this thing for years now, she thought to herself as she opened the box and removed the chrome Smith & Wesson from the blue velvet, along with the loaded cartridge. For the first time in a very long time, she slid the cartridge home and chambered a round, making the beautiful and deadly weapon ready to fire, and slipped the gun into the waistband of her trousers at her back.

It wasn't until she had closed the box and was ready to put it away in the drawer that she finally noticed what the box had been sitting on. At the time she'd put the box there, she hadn't really paid attention to anything else in the drawer — the important thing had been that the drawer locked and that the key was easy to hide. Now, however, she was paying attention. The leather-covered book with only "Charles Parker" emblazoned in gold at the bottom of the cover had been there all along — and she'd never noticed it.

She pulled the book from the drawer, replaced the box, closed the drawer and drew an unsteady breath. She would have thought that Mr. Raines would have cleaned out the private desk of his immediate predecessor a long time ago — but evidently not. Then again, she hadn't cleaned out the desk either — the only thing she'd been able to convince herself to do prior to Jarod's arrival was to dust and vacuum and generally straighten things up.

She opened the book and saw that it was filled with Mr. Parker's tight and pointed handwriting. The top of the first page was a date: April 17, 1958. She gasped. This was a journal — a very old one — containing the thoughts of the man who had played the role of her father for so many years.

She couldn't help herself from beginning to read…

I've just got to write this down. The day will come when I'm going to look back on this day and want to relive all the emotions and triumphs of what is sure to come, and what better way than talking to my future self. The shrinks at the Centre would no doubt think me crazy, but by God, if I am, then I'm crazy like a fox and I'm winning the game.

I wondered for a while if it was going to work. But the technique has been used without fail several times in clinical trials in Centre labs now, so I suppose I'd might as well get used to the idea. Convenient her having to have that appendectomy — it gave us the opening we needed, and now the deed is done. All we have to do now is wait.

Raines assures me that Catherine will never know what we did to her. Nobody will ever know. Who would suspect, after all, that anyone at the Centre would be capable of such a thing. Raines says that this is the ideal solution to our predicament — and I have to agree that this time he's right. Nobody will ever think that I'm half a man now — and the child will be a Parker, after a fashion. Raines' child will also be a Parker — although keeping the information away from Edna may be a more difficult matter. She already knows that Bill's incapable of fathering a child — and for her to have a similarly convenient need for minor surgery will surely make her suspicious. I wonder how Raines will convince her to go along with this...

_As for Catherine, she thinks she's so damned smart — leaving every April to go spend weeks at a time with that New Englander with no money, no future, just an inn on the coast. Everything's arranged so that she thinks that I think that she's going to her aunt's house to recuperate from the appendectomy when she heads to Maine this time. Raines insisted that I make a point of sleeping with her at least twice this past week, so as to provide a cover. She wasn't too happy about it and questioned the wisdom of it so soon after surgery, but I gave her the speech about being a good wife and seeing to my needs. I'm sure she's sleeping with that man too — so there will be double the questions asked, should the time ever come._

_She'll never know that she was already pregnant when I slept with her, already pregnant when that bastard in Maine put his hands on her then too. And nobody will ever guess that the child she produces will combine the Inner Sense of the Jamison line with the Inner Sense of the Grüen line into which the Parkers married two hundred years ago. If it hadn't been for Raines and his penchant for digging through the archives down in the sublevels, I'd have never found out about Sydney and Jacob being part of a Belgian offshoot of the Parker family. I sure as hell am never going to tell them about it. The most important thing is the preservation and advancement of the Parker name. I want those two Flemish cousins as employees and pawns — not family with as much right to the Chairmanship as I have! _

_Grand-dad set this up for me — I saw the files. It was ingenious! Working with the Nazis and then later Centre operatives, he isolated those boys and then groomed them for the role that they would play in the future of the Centre, all without sacrificing anything unnecessarily to them. It would be criminal for me not to make use of all that hard work and effort._

_How I'm going to laugh up my sleeve when I see Catherine seeking psychological counseling from Sydney, neither of them knowing that she's carrying his child! How much more I'm going to enjoy seeing her raise that child as mine. I will enjoy raising my child to consider Sydney as nothing but someone to be stepped on, used. And when my child begins to exhibit the enhanced Inner Sense that should be the result of breeding two powerfully psychic lineages together, how I will enjoy forcing Sydney to teach his unknown child how to control that sense. _

Through this, I will reinstate a physically strong and vibrant Parker line complete with special talents to replace what two generations of irresponsible inbreeding has created in Raines and me. And when that other child the scrolls supposedly talk about is found, I'll have everything I'll need to become the most powerful man on the face of the earth. I will be invincible... and I will take the Centre with me to the apex of power...

Parker's one hand flew to her throat as the private journal dropped away to land with a thud on the desk. All this time, and nobody had ever guessed. She stared at the opposite wall, stunned. She wasn't a Parker at all — she was a Grüen, a Green. She moved the journal to the side of the blotter, knowing that one of the first things she'd want to do in the morning would be to take that book over to Sydney's — over to her father's. If she survived the next few hours, that is…

That's when it hit her. Syd really WAS her father, and Davy's grandfather. It wasn't just a case of dear friends adopting each other — there was the tie of blood between them after all. And even though he'd been prevented from knowing, he had done his best to fill in the gaps left when Mr. Parker had fallen down on the job. And when she'd needed a father when her world had fallen apart, she'd gone to the one person she'd always felt best suited to the role to begin with.

There was a knock on the door that startled her badly, and Ikeda was quick to go to the door and check on who was waiting. Then he opened the door wider to let Sam and Chip Harrington in.

"I've got two sweepers watching the front and one at the back, Miss Parker," Sam announced almost immediately, then frowned at the disconnected expression on her face. "Miss Parker?"

She sighed again deeply. "Yeah, Sam, I'm OK." She rubbed a tired hand across her face. Her paternity was an issue that could wait. "Have we heard from the FBI? Just who is this joker anyway?"

Harrington stepped forward to answer. "I was the one who took the call, ma'am — and A.D. Berghoff wasn't naming names, just issuing warnings."

"Wonderful." Miss Parker's voice was disgusted. "Any idea how long it's going to take our valiant G-force to get here?"

"I suppose, if they were coming from D.C…" Sam started, only to be waved into silence.

"Forget it. Sam, I want you in the hallway between me and the front door — Chip, in the hallway between me and the back door. Ikeda-san here will be responsible for staying with me at all times." She blinked. "Do either of you have any idea if this loon wants to attack…" She thought again. "Chip, forget the hallway — take upstairs. I'm not about to have my children endangered again. Anybody we don't know or trust starts up the stairs, I want them dead before they hit the landing."

"Yes, ma'am," both security men responded in unison and headed for the library door.

As they filed out, Jarod made his way in. "Missy…"

"Jarod!" Never had she been so glad to see him. "Come here! You need to see this!"

"About Crystal…"

"We'll talk about her in a minute — this is more important to US, to our family." She stood and handed him the journal open to the page she'd just read.

Jarod half-closed the cover to find the embossed name on the front. "Your father's journal?" he asked her in surprise.

"Not exactly. Read," she directed him.

He scanned the tight scrawling until he came to the fifth paragraph, then glanced up at her sharply. "You're kidding!" he commented, then finished the section before handing the journal back to her. "The records he talks about — those must be the same ones that Sydney tripped over that caused him to flip out."

"He IS my father, Jarod," she said, finding the experience of actually saying the words aloud a staggering relief. "I don't have to pretend anymore, and neither does he."

Jarod smiled. "Feeling like you found your family at last?" She nodded, still reeling from the news. "I know exactly what you feel like — believe me."

Miss Parker shook herself again. "I just… had to share that with someone who'd understand, you know?"

"Yeah." He walked up to her and put his arms around her. "You OK?"

"I will be…" She shook her head to clear it. "Now, what is this about Crystal?"

"Do you remember her telling us about having a father who abused her?"

"Yeah…"

"Well, it seems that this abusive father is a US Senator — one of the three that were just arrested in regards to the conspiracy surrounding those projects you round-filed…"

Miss Parker stared. "You're kidding me? Which one?"

"Jackson from Vermont. The poor kid is worried about her mother, now that the father is supposedly behind bars — but she doesn't want to go home in case daddy gets loose and finds her at home again…"

"Mommy…" The child's voice that interrupted her was small and very frightened.

Both turned in surprise to see Ginger's head poked through the library door. "Sprite!" Miss Parker rushed to her daughter's side and swept her up. "What are you doing up again?"

"What going on? Why all these people?" The little girl wrapped her arm tightly around her new mother's neck. "Me scared all the Big Mans."

"Hush…" Miss Parker shushed at the child in her arms and looked over at Jarod. "Tell Crystal I want to talk to her in a minute — first I need to get Ginger back upstairs where she'll be safe."

"Take her to Mom's room," Jarod advised with a sharp look as he opened the library door. "Maybe she'll feel safer if she was with her Gamma."

"You're probably right." She seated the little girl a bit more securely on her hip and followed Jarod, with Ikeda directly behind her. "C'mon, Sprite, how about I take you back upstairs to Gamma — she'll make sure that nothing happens to you…"

"Mommy 'tay Gamma too…" Ginger clung more tightly. Something was terribly wrong to have all these people in the house at this hour of the night — the tension was palpable, and contagious. "Please…"

"Shhhh, baby girl. I'll be just fine. Sam's here, and so is Mr. Ikeda — and they'll take as good care of me as Gamma will take care of you." Miss Parker kissed the side of the girl's head as she carried her down the hallway toward the front door and the staircase.

"Miss Parker," called a very upset Crystal from the living room. "Wait…"

The sound of an engine being gunned resounded from the outside, followed quickly by an exchange of gunfire. Miss Parker froze as Ikeda moved toward her. "Upstairs, now!" he demanded with a pointed finger, and Sam took advantage of his proximity to put out a hand to her back to impel her to continue moving forward more quickly.

Having handily disposed of the sweepers in the front yard — one with an already dented front fender into the belly and the other with a pair of well-aimed shots after climbing from behind the steering wheel of his car — Tom Jackson's fury knew no bounds. Two steps took him from the side of his sedan to the front steps of the elegant house, and he took the steps themselves two at a time. Crossing the broad veranda, he landed a well-placed kick on the knob and lock assembly of the fancy front door and splintered the wood so that the doors sprang open to him and stalked into the house, finding the inside pandemonium. But best of all, he found the object of his fury within sight the moment he entered the house.

"You bitch!" he screamed and aimed the gun at the startled woman on the staircase with the child in her arms. "Who the Hell do you think you are, ruining everything?"

"Missy!" Jarod screamed in anguish, knowing himself too far away from her across the living room to be able to protect her.

"NO!" Sam yelled, and with a mighty thrust, pushed the woman down and forward and managed to wedge his body between hers and the gunman's. When the shot resounded, Sam fell bleeding from the shoulder and landed directly on top of Miss Parker and Ginger, who was screaming, covering them both and still protecting them. Jackson snarled and moved forward again to get a better and closer shot at his target so as not to miss this time.

"Daddy! No!" Crystal ran from the living room toward her father, appalled and shocked at what he'd just done and not thinking of consequences.

Jackson tore his eyes from his intended prey, struggling beneath the body of her protector, to stare dumbfounded for a moment at the sight of his long-lost daughter screaming at him. "You bitch!" he yelled at Miss Parker again. "You stole my girl too? Have you no shame?"

"Daddy!"

"Shut up!" The gun rounded on the young woman mercilessly. "You like that bitch so much, then die with her," Jackson snarled and aimed carefully. "You're nothing but a traitor anyway, just like your mother." The gun went off again, and Crystal halted in her step as a red stain began to spread across her chest, and then with a startled expression, sank to the floor in a heap without another word.

There was another scream, only this one from a man's throat, and suddenly the gun was flying from stunned fingers as Ikeda's foot impacted with the hand. The little Japanese man's motion was fluid as he leapt into the air yet again the moment his feet hit the ground and snapped into Jackson's jaw viciously, sending the man stumbling backwards. A third leap connected the foot with the bottom of Jackson's chin, toppling the man like a felled oak to land hard against the ruins of the front door and then droop to the floor. Instantly the ninja was moving to finish the job.

"Mate kudasai!" Miss Parker's sharp Japanese command snapped through the jumble of voices like a knife through soft butter. She was struggling to get out from beneath a wounded Sam. "Don't kill him! We turn him over to the Feds alive!"

Ikeda's uplifted hand froze in position, poised to thrust through the man's neck to sever his spinal column, and the other hand finally released its hold on Jackson's hair and let the head thud dully on the polished wood of the ruined door. "Hai, Parker-sama," he managed in a breathless voice, and then bent to twist the unconscious attacker over on his stomach and use the man's loose tie to bind his hands behind him.

"Crystal? Crystal?" Cavendish was crawling across the floor from where he'd taken refuse behind an easy chair to the still form of the young woman. "Oh my God! Someone call an ambulance!" he yelled, looking at his hand that was now covered in bright red blood from the floor near her. He pulled her head and shoulders into his lap and cradled her gently. "My God!"

"Sam…" Miss Parker turned and crouched near her Security Chief, turning him over. The man's face grimaced hard with the pain of the movement. "Oh shit…" she hissed as she saw the blood flowing down his shirt.

Then she was reaching for and pulling on little hands to get Ginger out from behind Sam. "Are you OK, Sprite?" she asked anxiously, running her hands over the girl as if to check for injury.

"Mommy OK?" Ginger asked back the moment she was free, her eyes wide and dark. She looked down at Sam's pale face. "Him 'tected you?"

"Yes, baby girl," Miss Parker answered quickly, then jerked on her sleeve to tear it away from her arm and wadded it up. "I need you to help me help him — here. Hold this on his shoulder, sweetheart. Push hard — we need to try to stop the bleeding until he can get to the doctor."

Ginger took the cloth from her mother and pressed it obediently against the wound, only to elicit a deep groan of agony from Sam. He looked over at the little girl who, despite that, continued to try to staunch his wound. "Thanks, Princess," he said in a tight voice that showed how much he hurt.

"You save Mommy," Ginger shook her head disbelievingly. "You push her down save her."

His opposite hand reached for the wadded up sleeve. "Here, sweet, let me…"

"Mommy telled me take care you," Ginger insisted firmly. "Me OK." She brushed his hand aside and settled herself a little more comfortably at his side. "Me do this."

Sam blinked, then chuckled painfully. If he didn't know better, he could have sworn he'd heard Miss Parker's old 'Ice Queen' tones coming from a seven-year-old. As tiny as she was, this little creature was made of stronger stuff than most. "Yes, ma'am," he said, letting the hand fall back.

"Parker-sama." Ikeda's hand appeared at her side, extended to help her pull herself upright and to her feet. "I have called the police and asked for ambulances to be dispatched…"

All she could think of… "Jarod?"

"Missy? He didn't hurt you?" The Pretender finally stepped over and through the furniture and around people to get to her side and pull her close in a tight embrace. "He didn't hit you?" He pushed back and stared into her face that he'd framed with a hand to each cheek, then kissed her with quick desperation. "Are you OK?"

"He got Sam," she said in a slightly shaky voice. "What about…"

"He got Crystal too," Jarod told her. "I've got Cavendish with her, but she needs to get to a hospital fast…

"Jarod? Are you all right down there?" Margaret appeared at the head of the stairs and stared at the scene of carnage and destruction spread below. "My God! Missy? Ginger?"

Davy's head peeked out from around his grandmother's waist. "Dad! Mom!"

"We're OK, Maggie," Miss Parker said from Jarod's arms. "Crystal needs help, though…"

And in the distance, a siren began howling — and coming closer.

Sydney hurried on his crutches as fast as he could through the emergency room doors and toward Zeke Cavendish, truly alarmed at the amount of blood his old colleague had splattered all over his clothing. "She didn't say that you'd been hurt as well…"

Cavendish waved his hand. "This is Crystal's blood, not my own."

Sydney shivered. "How are they?"

Cavendish shook his head. "The doctors aren't telling me very much — but from the sounds of it, it isn't good for the girl — they took her right away to surgery. Sam's going to be very sore and lose the use of his left arm for quite a while. I guess the bullet put a fairly big hole in him…"

Sydney felt his chest constrict slightly. He'd heard the cacophony of siren split the nighttime quiet and been ready to charge over to the Parker townhouse for a while, until Maggie had called and told him that his family was safe and sound. Then she had informed him about Sam and Crystal being shot — and he'd rushed to his car and driven the entire way in to Dover before Kevin or Deb could talk him out of it or take charge of the driving.

"I rode in with her, Sydney," Cavendish continued, a bloodied hand on Sydney's arm. "She was asking for you for a while."

"Damn!" Sydney leaned on his crutches and wiped at his face with his hand. "How long has she been in surgery?"

"About a half-hour ago — they didn't even hardly stop in the ER with her."

The emergency room door was pulled open yet again, this time to allow a very distraught-looking Mei-Chiang in. She saw Sydney and recognized him from the dinner that weekend and homed in on him almost immediately. "Mr. Sydney," she begged as she approached. "They tell me my Sam was hurt…"

"Dr. Cavendish has been with Sam and Crystal, Mei," Sydney said gently, taking her hand and wishing he could offer her more comfort. "He says that Sam was shot…"

"Shot!" Mei-Chiang swayed on her feet. "Miss Parker didn't tell me that…"

"Probably so that you wouldn't be upset all the way in here," he soothed. "He's in there," he pointed past through the wide door, "but evidently wasn't badly wounded." He turned to Cavendish again. "What did you say about Sam?"

"He won't be using his left arm and shoulder for a while, but with therapy, he'll be as good as new," Cavendish told the frantic Chinese woman. "I'm sure they'll let you in to see him soon."

Mei-Chiang let Sydney lead her to one of the uncomfortable molded plastic chairs that lined the walls of the waiting room. The psychiatrist maneuvered himself into the adjacent chair and leaned his crutches against the next chair, knowing that his own wait would probably be much, much longer than hers would be. Not knowing anything else that would help, he gently took one of Mei-Chiang's hands in his and held it. Oddly, the contact gave him almost as much comfort as he could offer to his friend's fiancée.

"I should never have insisted that she speak to Miss Parker," Cavendish sat himself down next to his old friend, wringing his hands. "All I wanted to do was to help her…"

"Why did she need to speak to Miss Parker?" Sydney was confused.

"She was worried about her mother now that her father was supposed to be in jail," the elderly psychiatrist answered absently. "I thought that maybe Miss Parker could dispatch a sweeper or some other representative to see if they could find…" He paused, his voice cracking. "And then her father turned out to be the madman gunning for Miss Parker… and he shot her in cold blood after trying for Miss Parker."

"Oh my God!" Sydney's stomach clenched.

Jarod looked around the front yard of his new home as he drove in the driveway. There was a car on the lawn, practically on the front steps, being tested and fingerprinted and studied in detail by the federal crime scene people, and the house itself was ablaze with lights. Centre sweepers had been called in, and between them and the FBI agents that had arrived as the first ambulance with Crystal and Sam had pulled away, the place was crawling. The coroner's wagon had already taken away the bodies of the slain sweepers that Jackson had left in his wake in the front yard. Inside, he knew, Missy and Chip Harrington were giving their statements. He'd already given his.

To protect Margaret and the children from the chaos as much as possible, Missy had given him the key to her old summerhouse. After stopping to change Ginger's clothing from blood spattered pajamas to something cleaner, he'd driven the three over to the quieter dwelling and helped Margaret try to calm the children back into bed. He'd stopped at Sydney's to fill everyone there in on the news, only to find that Margaret's call earlier had already inspired his old mentor to jump into the car and head for Dover, leaving Kevin and Deb worried and waiting for word. No doubt Dover General would be where Sydney would be until there was news on Crystal's condition — although Jarod had been skeptical that the girl would even survive the ambulance trip.

Slowly he climbed from the car and slumped tiredly toward the back door of the house. It was hard to imagine, after everything that had happened over the past few months, that a time would come when life would slow down to the dull hum-drum of what most people called 'normal.' Beginning with his plan to bring down the Centre administration, his life and that of those he loved had been filled with violence and tragedy — surely it had to end soon!

Miss Parker spied him as he came out through the dining room. "There you are," she sighed and caught him by the arm and dragged him close. "Agent Berghoff was just telling me how deep a hole Jackson was in BEFORE he decided to come calling on us."

"Oh?" Jarod turned curious and feral dark eyes on the federal agent. "And yet he was out of jail, free to get a gun and kill and maim…"

"We had no idea that the man had such explosive and violent tendencies," Berghoff told him with a flabbergasted shake of the head. "And we didn't know he was on his way here until he'd been on the road at least an hour. First he ran his wife down — seems she had taken refuge in a woman's shelter there, something he saw as tantamount to personal betrayal…"

"Yeah," Jarod scowled. "We saw what he did to his daughter when he found her here."

"He'll not get out of jail again," Berghoff promised. "We have him now on murder, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder — IF he's found sane enough for trial, he'll not see daylight again for a good long time."

"Be sure this time," Jarod cautioned the agent sharply. "I don't want to have to live my life looking over my shoulder. I've done that enough for one lifetime."

Berghoff gazed with undisguised curiosity at the man in front of him. If the article in the Post was right, this was a man that the Centre had been hunting for decades – and yet here he was, comforting the Chairman as if she was the most important person in the world to him. "I'd imagine you are at that," the FBI man commented appreciatively. "We should be just about finished here – then you folks can get back to your life." He headed off toward the front of the house, barking orders to first one and then the next.

"Are you OK?" Jarod asked her gently, feeling her lean into him just a little harder.

She shook her head. "Not yet," she answered tiredly, laying her head on his shoulder. "But I will be once I know that Sam and Crystal will be all right."

"Missy," Jarod shook his head. "I don't know about Crystal. That was…" He sighed. "I'm not even certain that she was going to live and make it to the hospital."

"I need to call my father…"

"He's gone to the hospital," he told her quickly. "My mom called to let them know over there what had happened – Kevin said that he was out of the house like a shot."

Miss Parker could feel the effect of the past hour or so finally shredding what was left of her composure, and she closed her eyes as she huddled closer into Jarod's embrace. "Do you think it's done yet?"

"What's done?" he asked softly.

"We've been moving from one crisis to the next ever since I took over this job," she said bitterly. "It never seems to end. Maybe Daddy was right, and I should never have accepted Ngawe's offer…"

"Daddy?" Jarod was confused.

"Sydney," she enlightened him quickly. "He's my father, right? Finally someone I can call 'Daddy' and not cringe…"

Jarod nodded with the explanation, and just held her tighter. "You did the thing you thought was right – and the one thing that WAS right for the Centre. You took the responsibility for turning that place into the kind of force that it was always meant to be – there's nothing to be sorry for there…"

"But if I hadn't – if I had just walked away, the way Daddy and Broots wanted me to…"

"Would we have been able to avoid some of the heartache?" Jarod continued the thought for her, then answered himself. "Very likely – but it's also equally as likely that we would have gone through other, potentially worse situations because the Centre would have stayed on the same path that it's been on all this time under the aegis of the Triumvirate – and very likely, you and I would be in no position to take up a life without having to look over our shoulders."

"I'm tired, Jarod," she sighed. "I've had people I loved or cared for killed and maimed. For what?"

"It will be worth it in the end, Missy…"

"You don't know that," she chided impatiently.

He smiled gently. "I have faith that it will," he replied gently. "Nothing can last forever – not the evil that the Centre was doing, and not the turmoil it's taking to get the Centre turned around."

She sighed again and tightened her hold around his waist. "I don't think that I could do this without you here."

"You'll never have to worry about my not being here again," he promised and kissed her forehead. "This is where I belong – and this is where I'm going to stay. You're stuck with me, Miss Parker."

"Grüen," she corrected him with a touch of pride. "Or Green, if you prefer."

"It will take a while to get used to," he said honestly. "You've been 'Parker' for me for a very long time."

"You'll get used to it," she told him seriously. "Because I will never answer to 'Parker' again. Never. I will be Miss Green until the day I become Mrs. Russell – but Miss Parker no longer exists."

Sam's face was almost transparent with pain, but he was on his feet and maneuvering under his own power – albeit with a determined and concerned Mei-Chiang beneath his good arm for support. His shirtsleeve was slit all the way to his shoulder, but the blue sling that held up the arm covered some of the worst of the bloodstains down the front of the garment. His coat jacket was just draped over the shoulder, providing limited protection from the cool of the evening.

"Any word on the girl yet, Syd?" Sam asked in a voice pinched tight with pain despite the medication he'd been given.

Sydney shook his head tiredly. "They were still working on her the last time I checked," he replied with a yawn. He glanced over at his psychiatric colleague a few seats over, who had actually managed to fall asleep in the incredibly uncomfortable chairs. "I left word that we were waiting for word, so hopefully the doctors will come here and give us a progress report when they're finished…"

"Why don't you call it a night?" Sam asked sympathetically, knowing that his old friend was very fond of the teenager who had taken care of him not so very long ago. "The doctors can call you when there's word – you look like you can use some rest."

Sydney sighed and then shook his head. "She needs someone with her when she wakes up," he insisted stubbornly, but then turned and nudged his colleague with a hand to the shoulder. "Zeke. Zeke. Wake up…"

"Hmmph! What?" The elderly psychiatrist blinked several times to wake himself up a bit. "Any word yet?"

"Not yet," Sydney shook his head. "Why don't you call it a night? Go on home with Sam and Mei-Chiang – I'll call you when there's word, I promise. There's no need for both of us to sit here…"

Watery blue eyes looked sleepily into tired chestnut, and then the older psychiatrist finally nodded. "I'll be back in the morning, in case you're still here by then," Cavendish announced. "That way, you can go home and get some rest too."

"You have a ride, doc?" Sam asked, "or would you like to ride back to Blue Cove with us?"

"I need wheels," Cavendish admitted. "I came in the ambulance with her…"

Chip Harrington pushed through the emergency doors. "How you doin', Chief?"

"He's ready to go home and stay in bed for a while," Mei-Chiang blurted out, tightening her hold on her giant economy-sized fiancé. "And I think you'll have an extra passenger. Doctor Cavendish could use a ride as well."

"Call me too when you have word, Syd," Sam said as Mei-Chiang began moving him toward the door. "I want to know too…"

"Call him in the morning," Mei-Chiang cautioned Sydney. "I have more pain medication for him for when he gets home that is SUPPOSED to put him down for a while."

Sydney gave her a knowing nod and then smiled when she began to chatter at him in soft Chinese as she directed his not-quite-steady steps out of the hospital waiting room. From the looks of things, Sam was probably too far out of it to notice anything but the sense of a mother hen clucking at him. "I guess we're gone," Chip commented with a chuckle. "Coming, doc?"

"You call," Cavendish shook a finger at Sydney.

"I will," Sydney promised somberly.

Harrington matched his steps to the elderly psychiatrist who was his unexpected passenger, and soon only Sydney was left in the waiting room. He retrieved his crutches and pushed himself to his feet with difficulty to walk over to the receptionist's desk. "Could you please check for me again and see if there's any word?" he asked worriedly.

The nurse at the desk, having had the same question put to her already several times over the course of the night, didn't even need to know about whom he was inquiring. She simply picked up the telephone and placed the call to the operating room and asked the question. She listened, then hung up the phone. "I'm really sorry," she told him yet again, "the only information they're releasing at the moment is that she's still in surgery."

"Damn!" Sydney swore to himself softly and made his way back to the uncomfortable seat where he'd already spent the better part of the night. He glanced down at his watch and sighed. It had been five hours already since Cavendish said that they'd taken her to the operating room.

"Gamma?" Ginger crept into Margaret's bedroom and up to the side of the bed. "Gamma?"

Margaret roused and then raised herself up on an elbow. "What's the matter, Sprite?" she managed in a very slurred and sleepy voice.

"Me can't s'eep," the little girl sighed. "Me 'tay you?"

"Grandma?" This time it was Davy's voice from the door. "Are you awake?"

Margaret regretfully roused more completely, although she wasn't really all that surprised at the development. It had been a VERY disturbing evening for everyone — it was reasonable that the children would have a delayed reaction. "Come on, then, both of you," she sighed and lifted the blankets. "Get into bed before your feet freeze off." Davy's feet thudded softly against the rug as he ran to the other side of the bed and slipped beneath the warm covers, while Ginger slid beneath the covers Margaret had already lifted for her. "What are you two doing still awake at this hour?"

"Can't s'eep," Ginger repeated.

"Are Mom and Dad going to be coming over here later?" Davy asked as he snuggled down next to his grandmother.

Margaret found herself with a grandchild beneath each arm, and kissed each on the top of the head as they snuggled down on her. "I doubt it, my sweets. They'll probably stay there and make sure everything gets locked up and closed down properly after the police leave…"

"There won't be any more shooting, will there?" Davy asked worriedly.

"Shhhh…" Margaret soothed the boy, who obviously had been made more upset than anyone had guessed. "From what I understand, Mr. Ikeda had the man who was doing all the shooting all nicely tied up and waiting for the police long before we came over here. So there's probably not going to be any more shooting. Don't worry."

"That man shooted at Mommy!" Ginger exclaimed with a shiver of remembrance. "Why?"

"I don't know, Sprite. I don't know that anybody knows for sure why a person decides to hurt someone else…"

"Big Man saveded Mommy."

"That was Sam," Davy told his sister. "I told you that he wasn't a bad guy…"

"That's enough chatter now," Margaret shushed at them both. "Time to close the mouth, close the eyes and go to sleep."

It was quiet again for a little while, and then: "Gamma?"

Margaret sighed. "What, Sprite?"

"No more bad mans come hurt Mommy?"

"I don't think so, sweetheart. But I'm sure Mommy will tell you herself tomorrow. For now, however…" she hugged the little girl tightly. "Go. To. Sleep!"

"G'nite, Gamma," Ginger answered back, snuggling as close as she could to her grandmother.

"G'nite, Grandma," Davy echoed, not at all shy about snuggling against Margaret's other side.

"G'nite," Margaret said and relaxed her head back against the pillow. She had a grandchild on each side of her, both huddling close and nestling against her like baby chicks. Life had certainly been unpredictable lately — but it was moments like these that made it all worthwhile. She closed her eyes again, glad that at least Jarod and Missy were safe now — and that the children who were so dependent on her now would have their Mom and Dad back in the morning.

She hoped.

Jarod rolled over in bed and cracked his eyes open to discover the bedside lamp still lit and Miss Parker still reading at Mr. Parker's journal. "Missy, for heaven's sake…"

"I need to know," she replied simply, looking over at him. "And I can't believe some of what he's written…"

"Sweetheart, you knew that he was a twisted, sick man…"

"I know," she answered, her voice incredibly sad, "but for the first time I'm hearing his REAL thoughts, and not just what he wanted others to think he was thinking. Does that make sense?"

He rolled himself up on an elbow. "No, it doesn't. Not after everything that happened tonight…"

"Some of what happened tonight you don't know," she told him softly. "Remember when I went back into the library to wait for Sam and Chip?" He nodded. "I started remembering… things…"

"I can imagine," Jarod replied sourly. "I've watched you over the last few days since I got back — and every time I go in there to do some work, you tend to send a kid or my mom to fetch me out for meals rather than come to get me yourself. You REALLY don't like that room, do you?"

Missy shook her head. "There are a lot of things… about me, Jarod…"

That was it. Jarod reached over, gently took the journal out of her hands, laid it on the night table on his side of the bed, and then pulled Missy down into bed and cradled her in his arms. "I have an idea of what those things are," he told her gently. "I'm not a shrink for nothing — and I've been observing you for years, decades. You've been displaying the classic signs of abuse all along — I knew about the beatings, you know that, but there was more, a lot more. I figured that out later, as time went by."

She nodded against his chest. "And yet Sydney had no idea… still doesn't, about some of it…"

"That's not surprising — Sydney hadn't been watching you through binoculars for years, and seen you when you were being yourself for years before that," he argued quietly. "And it's possible that he didn't want to know — because he was in no position to do anything about it, so it hurt him too much to want to think about it. God knows that you were a different person when I came back here — and I lay the credit for most of that at Sydney's door. You needed a decent father to undo the damage that bastard Parker did, and thank God you finally found one."

"For all that I thought Raines was the monster," she mused quietly, thankful for the strong arms around her, "I think Mr. Parker was more of one — because he appeared to be so sane. He kept his abuse of my mother and me quiet — hell, I even played into that after I grew up by never spending the night in the same building with him. Even so, and despite everything, I kept hoping that some day he'd treat me like a daughter ought to be treated…" She moved closer to Jarod. "Now I know why he never did. I was nothing but an experiment — a means to an end…"

"Are you sure you want to stay in this house now," Jarod asked quietly. "Maybe now that you've faced what you needed to face in that library, you can finally let go?"

"I'm thinking that it's about time that I redecorated the library," she countered with a hint of the old, saucy and indomitable 'Ice Queen' spirit. "Leave the bookshelves, but gut the room otherwise and let you choose the new furniture and flooring. Get rid of Mr. Parker's ghost once and for all."

"You're sure?"

"We need the room we have here, Jarod. We have two kids and family in California up the wazoo. This house has enough bedrooms for one or two guests without even having to open up the summerhouse. It's in town, closer to Daddy for the kids…"

"OK, OK," he chuckled, letting his hand slip up and down her shoulder slowly in a soothing gesture. "I just don't want you staying here because you think you have something to prove — your need to do that walked out of a jet plane over the Atlantic years ago."

"I know."

"Turn off the light, then, and go to sleep. You've had enough excitement for one day."

She rolled out of his arms just long enough to reach out to the lamp on the night stand and send the room plunging into darkness before she was rolling back to where she had been. She smiled as she felt the arms enfold her again and then lay still and contented for a long moment. "Jarod?"

"Mmm?"

"Thanks."

His lips found her forehead and kissed her gently. "My pleasure," he rumbled sleepily at her. "Go to sleep now."

"You're being awfully pushy…"

"Shhh!"

A hand at Sydney's shoulder shook him from his slumber. "I just had a call from the operating room," the duty nurse told him as soon as he'd regained enough of his wits to understand her. "Miss Jackson is out of surgery and in the recovery room. The doctor will be out to speak to you in a bit."

"Thank you." Sydney sat up straighter in the molded plastic chair and stretched, only to find that he had several kinks in his neck from the posture he'd adopted when he'd fallen asleep. Self-consciously he straightened his sweater and ran his hands over his face in an effort to pull himself more awake again.

He'd managed to get himself up on his feet and over to a drinking fountain for a sip of water by the time the green-garbed surgeon came into the waiting area. "You're here for Karen Jackson?"

"How is she, doctor?" Sydney demanded immediately.

The obviously tired doctor swept the scrub hat from his head and stuffed it in a pocket. "She's a fighter," he announced with some admiration. "Considering the damage that was done, frankly I'm surprised she made it through this far. We'll have to see if she still has enough in her to pull through this."

"How bad was it?"

"The bullet nicked the pulmonary artery as well as the left atrium and caused a great deal of blood loss. We almost lost her three times when her blood pressure dropped."

"And now?" Sydney folded his face into a frown. "Will she recover?"

The surgeon shrugged and shook his head. "I've done all I can for her — the rest is up to her. If she can survive the next twenty-four hours, she has a fairly decent shot at a full recovery. But…" The surgeon's face grew grave. "…the damage done to her system was extensive. The bullet used was a hollow-point — it ripped things apart rather badly in there…" He gazed into Sydney's frantic eyes. "I don't want to say there's no hope, but I'd be lying if I put her chances at greater than ten to one odds."

Sydney was glad he was on his crutches, for without them he would have fallen down. "Can I see her?" he asked in a desperate voice.

"Once she's out of recovery, she'll be moved to Intensive Care. I understand that she has no family, and that you are the person she called for in the ambulance before losing consciousness. I'll have you paged once she's settled in the ICU."

"Thank you, doctor," Sydney said fervently, shaking the man's hand firmly. "Thank you for everything you've done."

The surgeon walked tiredly back into the bowels of the hospital while Sydney propped his crutches against one chair before dropping back into the torturous chair in which he'd already spent the better part of the night. He debated pulling his cell phone out and making calls, but then decided against it. Zeke needed his sleep, and Sam was probably happily under the influence of the pain medications he'd been given. The next morning would be soon enough to call either of them.

He folded his arms over his chest and dropped his chin again. The next few hours promised to be long ones.

Feedback, please:


	33. Not A Bang, But A Whimper

Resolutions – 33

Not a Bang, But a Whimper

by MMB

Crystal swam hard against the dark flow that kept driving her down, down, towards nothingness. Her chest hurt — it felt as if a ton of rocks was sitting on her, making it hard to breathe. And she was so tired — so very, very tired. It was hard to summon the strength to continue to fight against the strong tide pulling her backwards and down into that deep darkness. But something kept urging her to try, to continue fighting. Finally she was able to feel the hand holding hers tightly, although she could do little to move the fingers within that grasp.

She must have done something, though, for the grasp tightened, and then she could feel the sensation of someone stroking her forehead and cheek gently. She took in a deep breath that ached more than any other she'd taken as yet, and she moaned softly. "That's it," a gently accented voice urged her anxiously. "That's it. You can do it. I knew you were stronger than anybody thought."

She swam harder against the dark flow now, struggling to get to the voice that was calling her by name now. Another achingly painful and deep breath, and she was able to flutter her eyelids. As the darkness receded, she could catch glimpses of light, and finally her eyes cracked open just a little.

"There you are," Sydney sighed in relief. His fingers resumed the rhythmic stroking of her cheek that had begun the moment he'd felt her fingers twitch in his. Outside it was already daylight — but he'd not paid attention to anything but the pale face in front of him. Behind the bed, the heart and blood pressure monitor measured Crystal's bodily functions silently, and the intravenous tubing snaked down into the crook of her right elbow. Hanging from the rack were a plastic bag of whole blood to replenish her severely diminished system into which the nurse had injected medication several times over the time he'd spent at her side.

Crystal blinked slowly once more to try to clear her vision and then moaned and tipped her head toward the voice and the gentle stroking. Whoever it was sitting next to her was nothing but a blur. She blinked again, and the blur began to resolve itself into Sydney's worried face.

"Shhh…" he soothed the moment he saw that she'd recognized him, stroking her cheeks and forehead again very gently. "You've been through a very tough time, and you need to rest and get better now…"

"Wha…" Why couldn't she get her lips to form proper words? Her forehead creased with the effort.

"You're in the hospital," Sydney told her gently. "You just came out of surgery. It's OK for you to be groggy right now — you need your rest so you can heal."

Her fingers tightened in his grasp just enough to show her desperation. She concentrated and finally got her lips to move more coherently. "My… fa…"

"You're safe, sweetheart," he soothed again. "He'll never be able to hurt you again. Don't think about him right now. Think about getting better…"

Her mind flew back to the last thing she could remember clearly — her father pointing a gun at her and the sensation of being shoved back in the chest, hard. He'd shot her, she suddenly realized. She should be dead! Finally her eyes cleared to the point that she could see just how worried Sydney was as he sat next to her, and from the pain in her chest began to connect the dots. Summoning her almost non-existent strength, she whispered, "I'm… not…going… make… it… am… I?" When Sydney's face folded in grief and frantic worry, she took a more shallow breath to avoid the ache. "Tell… me… truth…"

The chestnut eyes came up to meet hers with a sudden burst of fierce resolve. "You've been surprising them all night long, sweetheart — there's no reason you can't keep on surprising them. Sometimes people do beat the odds."

"I… wish…"

"What?" Sydney asked in choked voice. It was like he could feel her beginning to slip away from him again, and he was ready to use anything at all to keep her there, keep her fighting to live. "What do you wish? Tell me…"

Her dark eyes studied his face wistfully. She'd known this man such a short time, and yet come to cherish his friendship. What an irony! She pulled in another shallow breath. "Known… you… long… time… ago…"

"Don't you do that! You stay with me," Sydney demanded roughly, picking up her hand and holding it tightly between both of his. "I know it hurts, and I know you're tired. But you need to stay with me now…"

"So… tired…" The word was nearly inaudible. The dark eyes fluttered closed and stayed that way.

Sydney frantically reached his fingers to her pulse and looked up to the monitor behind the bed to find that the steady rhythm of her damaged heart hadn't faltered. She had only fallen asleep again. Well, she'd said that she was tired…

"Sydney?" A hand landed on his shoulder, and he turned around to see Zeke Cavendish standing behind him.

"Zeke," he breathed. "What time is it?"

"After eight-thirty," the old man said quietly. "I thought I'd come in and spell you — you look absolutely exhausted."

"She was just awake for a little bit and has dropped off again," Sydney related tiredly. "I honestly don't think they expected her to make it this far."

"You go on now, and I'll watch over her until you come back." Zeke pushed on Sydney's back to urge him out of the chair. "She won't wake up alone, I promise."

"Thanks." Sydney sighed and reached for his crutches, which were leaning against the small cabinet to the side of the bed. "Call me if there's any change — no matter when. I'll be back as soon as I can."

"I'll call if there's any news." Zeke promised and gazed at his colleague as Sydney pulled himself to his feet. "You shouldn't drive, though, in your condition," he observed pointedly. "You'd just end up back here in worse shape than you already are."

Sydney halted on his slow departure, thought about it for a moment with a mind almost too tired to do any thinking at all, and then nodded. "I'll call and have someone come in to pick me up," he conceded.

Zeke nodded his agreement and then sat down where Sydney had been. He took up Crystal's hand in his just as Sydney had been holding it and began chafing it between his own gently.

Satisfied that Crystal was safely under the watchful eye of someone else who apparently cared for her too, Sydney walked out of the ICU and looked around blearily for a phone booth. Then he remembered and thrust his hand into his pocket and came out with his cell phone and punched a button.

"Hello?" Missy's voice came over the line.

"Hi there," he answered tiredly.

"Syd… You sound awful! Oh God, is she…"

"She's alive — although the doctor's weren't holding out much hope she'd make it this far," he repeated his report. "But Zeke just came in to sit with her so I could get some rest, and suggested that I shouldn't drive…"

"Have you been awake all this time?" Missy sounded surprised. "You must be ready to drop!"

"I know better than to get behind the wheel again, that's for sure," he assured her. "I'm afraid I'll need to bother someone for a chauffeur…"

He could hear conversation on the other end of the line. Then: "Jarod will drive in to… no wait…" The background conversation surged and then declined again. "I'm taking some time to be with the kids this morning — so Jarod and Maggie can drive in and Maggie will drive you back in your car."

"Whatever," he sighed, contented with whatever arrangements she could make for him. "I'll probably be out like a light in the front lobby…"

"They'll find you," she promised, then couldn't resist. "I love you."

Sydney frowned at the strange tone of voice she'd used. "Is something wrong?" he asked quickly, "one of the kids…"

"No, no, nothing like that," she reassured him. "I just… we'll talk about it when you've gotten some rest."

"All right," he replied, a little confused. God, how tired he was getting of being perpetually out of the loop. "I love you too, ma petite."

"Talk to you later, Da… Syd," she said and disconnected.

Sydney tucked the phone away and started making his way to the front lobby where he said he'd be. Parker must still be tired herself after all the excitement the night before — she had been on the verge of calling him something other than her stock nickname for him. Well, Hell, how could he complain — he was just damned tired in general himself right now.

The lobby was already filling with people waiting for one thing or another, with a lively set of toddlers giggling and playing with their toys in strollers. Sydney found a relatively quiet spot near the door to sag into a much more comfortable seat, then put his crutches carefully out of harm's way against the nearby wall. It was a half-hour drive from Blue Cove into Dover. Maybe he could stay awake that long — he wasn't quite sure.

"Are you sure you want to do this today?" Kevin asked Deb as she picked up their coffee cups and put them in the dishwasher.

"Daddy called me last night before everything went south," she told him, "and said that he'd talked to the doctor and had something to tell me that he didn't want to tell me over the phone. I suppose if we're going to be hearing bad news, we might as well get all the news out and over with — waiting isn't going to change anything or do any good."

"I thought you were going to have Miss Parker go in with you," he reminded her.

"I have you," she smiled at him bravely from across the kitchen. "And I'm a big girl. Any problems Daddy has with Grandpa or Miss Parker belongs between them — maybe once we've settled things between us, he won't be quite so upset with them. They really don't need the hassle right now…"

"Yeah." Sydney had been gone when they'd gotten up this morning — leaving a note explaining where he was going and why and telling them not to expect him back for a while. "Well, I'm in it with you, so I might as well face the music with you too."

"I love you," Deb said gently and leaned over his back and hugged him from behind.

He turned his head and collected a kiss. "I love you too. How soon we leaving?"

"Let me leave a note for Sydney — in case he gets home while we're gone. Considering everything, we don't need to worry him needlessly when nobody's here when he gets back…" Deb straightened and reached for the note pad near the telephone and Sydney's crossword puzzle pen.

Missy looked up from the newspaper as she felt Ginger sidle up to her at the kitchen table and begin to huddle again. Both children had been quite clingy since she had arrived and taken over from Maggie. "What's the matter, Sprite?" she asked gently and pulled the girl into her lap.

"Bad mans shoot at you," Ginger said, leaning. "Why?"

"He was very angry at me, baby girl, and sometimes people get so angry that they forget how they're supposed to behave."

"Did you do something to him, Mom?" Davy inquired from the kitchen doorway of his old home. He'd been wanting to hover too — the sight of the blood all over the hallway and living room of his new house had been quite upsetting, especially considering that a good deal of it was Sam's.

"He was involved in some business dealings with the Centre that I put a stop to," she answered simply yet truthfully. "He wasn't happy that I told him we wouldn't work for him anymore, and decided I was to blame."

"What happen him now?" Ginger asked. "Him go jail?"

"That's right," Missy cuddled her girl. "We don't have to worry about him anymore — that's what the policeman told me."

"Are lots of people mad at you?" Davy followed his sister's line of thought and earned himself a sharp glance.

"That's what happens when I'm the boss at the Centre, Davy. Decisions are made that make some people unhappy, and I'm the one who ends up getting the blame or credit. But I tell you what…" She reached out an arm and dragged him closer to her too. "The things that I did, I'd do over again. The things I put an end to NEEDED to be stopped because they weren't helping anybody."

"Are they going to clean up all the blood in our house before we go home again?" he asked next.

"Yes, I'm going to call and have some of our Centre people come over and do that for me. We'll be staying here for a little while, until that's done."

"This Mommy house too?" Ginger piped up, feeling a little more reassured.

"Yes, this is where I lived with Davy before you and Daddy came to live with us. This was your Grandma's — my Mommy's — special place. She came here to paint and rest." Missy cuddled her new daughter and leaned a cheek against the top of a dark head. Davy had been full of questions at this age too.

"You aren't going to work today?" Davy pushed in closer. "And I'm not going to school?"

"I thought I'd stay home with you both — at least for this morning — so that we could talk about what happened last night and make sure that you two aren't still scared or having bad dreams about this." She looked down at each child in turn. "Did you have bad dreams last night?"

"Me not want s'eep 'til me be with Gamma," Ginger replied cryptically.

"Huh?"

"Grandma let us climb into bed with her when we couldn't get to sleep," Davy explained patiently. "I wasn't sleeping either. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Sam with all the blood and…"

"Mommy! How Sam this morning?" Ginger suddenly remembered the man she'd helped nurse the night before —a Big Man who didn't seem quite so scary anymore. "Him OK?"

"You know, I'm not sure," Missy answered and shifted Ginger back down to the floor. "How about I call up the office and ask Mei how he's doing?"

Ginger smiled and bounced on her feet a little while Davy just looked expectant and hopeful. "He wasn't hurt too bad, was he?" he asked.

"I honestly don't know, little man. I'll have to ask Mei." Missy picked up the telephone and dialed a familiar number — then blinked in surprise. "Xing-Li? Where's…"

"She's stayed home with Sam, Miss Parker, and Mr. Tyler thought the he'd go ahead and handle your appointments for you today. He figured you might want time with your family, since it was your home that got broken into…"

Missy smiled. "Is he busy, or can I talk to him?"

"He's waiting for your first appointment," the secretary answered confidently. "Just a moment, I'll get him for you."

"Hey!" Tyler answered the moment he picked up the telephone. "I heard about your excitement last night — you OK?"

"I'm fine — thanks for stepping in for me while I take a little time here to…"

"Don't even think about it. Will you be in today at all?"

Missy glanced guiltily at the children looking up at her so expectantly. "After lunch sometime, I'd imagine. I'll have to wait until Jarod gets back — I don't want to leave the kids alone today."

"Have you seen the today's paper yet?"

"Not exactly," she replied. "I was just on the front page when I got interrupted. Is there something I need to see?"

"Page three," Tyler told her mysteriously, his hand coming to rest on the folded copy sitting in front of him.

"Good or bad?"

"Whatever you told that reporter fella — it worked," Tyler's voice was contented. "He sure put the ducks in the rows they belong in."

Missy relaxed and sighed. "I'll read it after a bit. I'm trying to reach Mei for a status report on Sam."

"Tell her to give him my best, will you?" Tyler asked immediately. "If they need anything, just call in and I'll take care of it after work tonight. Have you had any word on the girl?"

"Syd says she's still alive, but that's about it."

Tyler nodded. Such a horrible thing to happen to a sweet kid. "Thanks. I'll talk to you later then…"

She disconnected and dialed another number. "Atlee residence," Mei-Chiang's quiet voice answered the telephone.

"Mei, it's me…"

"Miss Parker, good morning. I'm sorry I didn't call you directly…"

Missy held up her hand. "Whoa. I just called to see how Sam's doing this morning."

"Oh." Mei-Chiang glanced over her shoulder at the stairs, down which she was hoping Sam wouldn't even try to come that day. "He's asleep right now, Miss Parker — I gave him another pain pill this morning."

"What did the doctor say?"

"He said that he was lucky — the bullet didn't break up as badly as it did in that girl, Crystal?" Mei-Chiang stumbled over the name. "Still, it ripped a lot of muscles — he's not going to be able to use the arm for quite a while."

Miss Parker winced. Sam was a strong man — losing the use of an arm for any length of time would be difficult for him. "Well, you tell him that he's got two kids over here asking about him and worrying about him, will you?"

Mei-Chiang began to smile. "TWO kids?"

"Yeah," Missy looked down. "Ginger feels very concerned because she tried to help him before the ambulance came."

"I'll tell him," Mei-Chiang answered. "Thank you so much for calling."

"I'll see you tomorrow?"

"If Sam's doing better," she promised. If he wasn't, there was no way that anybody was going to be able to drag her away from his side.

Missy said goodbye and hung up the phone. "OK, I talked to Mei. Sam's asleep right now, and his shoulder is pretty badly messed up — but he'll be OK."

Ginger's face relaxed a little and Davy nodded. "Can we go draw in the studio, Mom?" he asked next.

"Sure," Missy nodded. "Let me get you set up… maybe we could all see what we can draw. Or we could make Sam some get-well cards…"

"Me like do that!" Ginger nodded firmly and caught up Bear from where she'd left him on the couch. "Can Bear send him card too?"

"I'm sure he can, if you help him do the drawing…"

"You didn't have to do this…"

Margaret simply shook her head and opened the back passenger door to stow the crutches behind Sydney. "Quit complaining. You'd think I was helping you out of another man-eating sofa. Missy said you needed a chauffeur, and heaven knows it would be better not to leave your car in the hospital parking lot…"

Sydney held his tongue as Margaret slipped behind the wheel of his car and began adjusting the seat and mirrors. He really was grateful for her help — although he would have been more than happy to leave the Lincoln in Dover and catch a ride home with Jarod. "I'm sorry — I'm overtired… I don't mean to bite your head off…"

"You don't have to apologize," she told him with another shake of the head. "How's Crystal?" she asked, turning the key in the ignition and backing out of the parking space carefully.

"Still alive," was the best he could report. "At least she was when I left her in Intensive Care. She was in surgery for over five and a half hours."

"Poor child." She guided the car back onto the street that would take them to the highway south without needing any instructions. "And you sat up with her after that?"

He nodded. "She woke up for a very brief time before Zeke Cavendish came to sit with her while I went home."

Margaret took a good look at him while sitting at a red light. "You DO look all in. Why don't you put the seat back and take a nap. I know the way home, and I don't have to have company for the whole half hour."

"If I fall asleep, I might as well stay asleep in the car," Sydney grumbled testily, then relented when he realized that she really didn't deserve his poor attitude. "Honestly, Maggie — I'm afraid that if I drop off now, you won't be able to wake me when we get to the house…"

"Sydney," she replied as she guided the car into the southbound lane of the highway smoothly, "trust me. If I need to wake you up, I'll be able to wake you up."

With his head tiredly back against the headrest, he studied her face. Considering everything, the reason he didn't want to fall asleep was that he had no way of knowing if this would be one of those times when one of his fast-moving nightmares would swoop in on him. Those always left him feeling rattled and vulnerable — and he was overtired, which was a sure-fire way for those dreams to get at him.

She glanced over at him and found him watching her. "You're not napping."

"You noticed," he replied.

She turned back to watch her driving with a wry twist of the lips and a shake of the head. "You're a stubborn man — even more stubborn than Charles used to be."

"I have my reasons, I promise," he answered tiredly, although perfectly content to just watch her. She was interesting enough in her own right — maybe enough to keep him awake…

"What reasons are those?" she asked bluntly.

He blinked in surprise and then considered if he wanted to answer her. Try as he might, he couldn't think of a good reason not to — and knew that at least trying to keep a conversation going might help keep him awake until he hit his daybed. "Nightmares," he said simply. "I don't need to scare you out of your wits and get us into an accident when I get one of those and then wake up rather abruptly… or loudly…"

"Jarod used to have lots of nightmares," she reminisced gently. "It took a while before he finally started to talk about them to us — and after that, they slowly went away."

"That's not surprising," he replied before he could think, automatically dissecting the situation as she had given it to him. "Nightmares are often a psyche's way of airing issues and problems that the waking mind is having trouble dealing with. Very often, just discussing the dream with another person can help the dreamer put the issue or problem in perspective and then resolve it."

"Spoken like a true shrink," she quipped, turning to grin at him mischievously for a brief moment before turning back to watch the road.

"I knew those letters after my name were there for some reason," he quipped back.

"At least now I know that your getting overtired doesn't mean that your sense of humor takes a holiday."

"Oh, now this is not fair," he said, straightening slightly and then turning in his seat so that he could rest the side of his head against the cushioned headrest and watch her more openly. "I'm too tired to be able to banter properly."

"I'm not heading home quite yet," Margaret said with a sideways glance. "I'm sure we'll have plenty of opportunities to banter back and forth before then."

"What about after?"

That surprised her, and she gave him a long glance. So he hadn't forgotten that fleeting moment in the doorway after all, even with the excitement of the evening. "What about it?"

"We'll just have to banter long-distance, I guess," he followed his own tired reasoning to its obvious conclusion, then yawned.

For some reason, the idea of long-distance banter seemed to please Margaret immensely. The car filled with a comfortable and companionable silence between them, and Sydney slowly dropped off watching the way her face reflected her thoughts. A remarkable woman, he agreed with his previous estimation of her now even more than ever before as his eyes fell shut of their own volition — Maggie Russell was a very remarkable woman indeed.

"Deb," Broots smiled at his daughter as she came into the room, and then grinned a little wider. "Kevin — I didn't expect to see you today…"

Deb bent to give her dad a hug and a kiss, then did a double-take. "That's right, you got your cast off!"

Broots extended a hand for Kevin to shake. "Yeah – and I bet I smell a lot better than last time you were here."

"Dad…" Deb sat down in the chair with Kevin hovering close by behind her. "So what was it you wanted to tell me?"

Broots gazed evenly at the young man standing very protectively behind his daughter. "Kevin, do you think you could give me a few minutes here?"

"Daddy," Deb shook her head. "Part of the reason Kevin came in today is because we have something to tell you too." She blushed a little and then took courage from Kevin's hand landing gently on her shoulder. "Do you remember what I told you a while back about Kevin and me?"

"About your feelings for him?" Broots asked, confused. "Yeah. But what…"

"Daddy — when the time is right, we've decided we're going to get married."

Broots stared, first at Deb, and then at Kevin. "That's… great… I guess…" he stammered. "It's a little soon, isn't it?"

"Not really, sir," Kevin answered with far more poise than he was feeling inside. "Our relationship has been getting closer for quite a while now — ever since Deb came to stay with Sydney."

"Deb, honey, are you sure? I mean, you're just getting over everything that happened to you in California…"

"I told you before, I need Kevin to do that, Dad," Deb announced very calmly and gently. "He keeps me balanced when I have a nightmare. He's so good to me, Daddy — I wish you could see…"

Broots looked hard into his daughter's face and saw nothing but utter sincerity in her gaze. When she looked at Kevin, the love in her eyes was unmistakable. "I know…" he started, then paused. "How soon do you intend to get married, then?" He turned to her earnestly. "And what about your schooling?"

"We won't get married right away," Kevin informed him carefully. "I'm wanting Sydney to retrain me properly as a Pretender — and then I can work at the Centre doing what I do best and make enough to support Deb as she goes to school."

"And Grandpa is keeping an eye on us, helping us work out any hitches in the relationship," Deb told her father with a cautious smile. "He wasn't too thrilled with the way things developed, but he's working with us now…"

"What was it that bothered Sydney?" Broots asked suspiciously. "Syd's got a good sense of judgement about him — I've learned not to question him very often, you know…"

"Well," Deb hedged. Kevin moved closer, as if knowing that she was going to tell her father what was really going on now and needed the moral support to get through it. "Daddy, Kevin and I… we're… kinda… living together now…"

"You're WHAT?" Broots' eyes bulged in shock and dismay. "And Sydney is LETTING you do this — in his house?"

"It happened when he was gone a day or so," Kevin admitted quickly and fearfully. "He was furious when he found out…"

"I don't think I've ever seen Grandpa quite that angry before," Deb remembered with a wry look on her face. "He's scary when he gets really angry."

"That's beside the point," Broots sputtered. "I trusted him with your welfare — he was supposed to help you get over… I should have called him when you told me that Kevin was coming into your bedroom…"

"Daddy," Deb stepped close and took her father's hand. "Grandpa has been so much help with the California…"

"But he sure has been a piss-poor chaperone," Broots growled, truly angry. "What the Hell were you thinking, Deb?" He threw his arms up in the air. "What was I thinking, not calling Syd and raising hell for getting comfortable with the idea of you two being in a bedroom together?"

"Sir," Kevin stepped forward to defend Deb.

"Don't think I'm not holding you responsible too," Broots barked at the young man, shaking a forefinger in his direction. "Here I am, stuck in this damned hospital where I can't keep track of my daughter, and her own adopted grandfather lets her shack up with…"

"Daddy, stop it." Deb's voice had a measure of anger to it that it had never held towards her father before. "We're telling you this so that you'll understand what the situation is with us. We're not asking your permission — although I'd like to think that you'd give us your blessing eventually."

"Why the Hell didn't Sydney tell me this himself?" Broots demanded of nobody.

"I told him I wanted to tell you myself," Deb replied quietly. "I asked him not to say anything until I'd talked to you."

"What about Miss Parker? What did SHE say about this?"

"She wasn't a whole lot happier about it than Grandpa — both of them chewed us out pretty thoroughly for a couple of days."

Broots turned inquiring eyes to Kevin, who merely nodded and added, "I'm sure there's nothing that you could say that Miss Parker and Sydney haven't already thrown at us."

"Daddy, please, be happy for me," Deb cajoled, taking her father's hand and holding it tightly. "You always told me that the day would come when I knew the person I'd want to spend my life with — well, there he is. I love him and he loves me, and we're working on starting a life together."

"You might as well get married then," Broots said in defeat, "and make it official."

Deb's smile was incandescent. "You do give us your blessing then?"

"I don't have a lot of choice in the matter, now, do I?" Broots asked begrudgingly, but then squeezed his daughter's hand. "I just want you to be happy and have a good life, SweetPea. If you say that marrying this guy is what will give you those things, then I'm not going to stand in your way." He glared at Kevin briefly. "I would have preferred that you had waited until AFTER getting married for starting to live together…"

"Understood," Kevin replied with some chagrin.

"And if you EVER hurt her, you'll answer to me — and then whatever I leave will have to face the rest of them!"

Kevin nodded, understanding completely. He'd already faced Sydney's anger over his fumbling of the relationship once — there was no way he wanted to face it again.

"Now, what were you going to tell me?" Deb asked, grateful that the full truth was now out so that she didn't have to feel like she was hiding anything from her father anymore. "It's your turn to hand out the news…"

Broots blinked, having a quick spate of difficulty moving from the topic of his daughter's now full love life to his own disability. "I start physical therapy later today," he told her gently, "to build up the strength in my upper body so I can handle a wheelchair…"

"You aren't going to be able to walk?" Deb asked, aghast at the idea of her father permanently trapped in a wheelchair.

"One of my legs is numb — I can't tell it's there, SweetPea. The doctor is hoping that this is temporary, but there's a chance that I'll have to use crutches and a brace from now on." His heart swelled when he saw Kevin put a comforting hand on Deb's shoulder in an attempt to be there for her. The young Pretender was making all the right moves, and certainly seemed sincere. "I'm stuck here in the hospital, anyway, for at least another week or two while they run tests and get my therapy moving along. Then we'll see how much they can bring back for me as time goes on."

"A couple of weeks yet?" Deb sounded disappointed. "I thought…"

"I can't come home until I have a way to get around and do things at least a little for myself, Deb," Broots told her. "Believe me, although I'm happy to be out of that damned cast so that I can actually scratch the itches, I'm in no shape to be home."

"What are you going to do when you do come home?" Deb worried. "You can't manage the stairs in a chair…"

"We could set your Dad up the same way we've had Sydney set up while HIS leg was healing," Kevin suggested. "Do you have a den or a family room…"

Deb was already nodding. "Yeah…"

"I'll do just fine," Broots soothed. "You won't have to worry about me…"

"Yes, we will do just fine," Deb told him firmly, "And we will worry about you. That's part of the contract, remember?"

Kevin looked confused, but Broots had to smile at the inside joke. "Darn that fine print anyway, right?" Deb chuckled. The balding man in the bed thought for a while, and then extended a hand to the young man still standing a safe distance away. "You're going to take good care of my little girl, aren't you?"

"Absolutely," Kevin replied without hesitation and took the hand of the father of his beloved Deb. "I swear to you, sir, she's the most important person in the world to me."

"Fair enough then." Broots looked back and forth between the two, shook the hand firmly and then let go. "Fair enough then. Mind you, I still intend to have a few choice words with your Grandpa when I get the chance…"

"It wasn't Grandpa's fault, Daddy," Deb insisted. "He was pretty firm on keeping us apart — but something happened to him, and he was gone for a few days, and that was when…"

"You took advantage of the situation?" Broots looked up at Kevin accusingly.

"Kevin didn't take advantage of the situation, Daddy, I did," Deb corrected her father's perception. "I was the one that pushed. Don't blame Kevin, and don't blame Sydney. This is something I started." She looked down at her father unapologetically. "And I'm not sorry I did."

Deb's defense of her grandfather finally penetrated. "OK," Broots crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her skeptically. "So maybe you should explain to me why I shouldn't hold your Grandpa responsible for falling down on the job as chaperone."

"Do you remember me telling you that something had come up about the Nazis?"

Broots stared at her, not wanting to remember how just a hint of Sydney's past in a Nazi concentration camp had knocked his old friend for a loop. Deb had hinted at this before — he just hadn't made the connection. "Yeah?"

"Well…"

"I ran across some files while we were looking through the hardcopy archives," Kevin added to the story, "and they were in German, and I don't read German…"

George Canfield tried to ignore the stares of the security men in the office building as he walked through the lobby and over to the elevator. /Yes/ he answered the questions in their eyes in his mind, /I'm one of the ones who were arrested today. I'm one of the ones who'll be the next scandal to play out in an Ethics Committee hearing room. But no, I'm not the one that went postal and killed his wife, daughter and tried to take out the Chairman of the Centre — he's locked up in the psychiatric ward of the jail under observation./

Canfield snorted. /If they knew what I was thinking, I'd be under lock and key and observation too. Good thing I know enough not to go off my nut and run around with guns./ The elevator door closed him into the tiny space, and he leaned heavily against the metal railing that ringed the car.

It was over. He'd spent the better part of the last day being debriefed — looking at Phil Baldwin's cryptic notes in the margins of the group's ledger and deciphering some of it. Hopefully he'd done enough that the agents could continue the deciphering job by themselves. He'd explained the hierarchy of the conspiracy as a whole and drawn up a flowchart to explain how the money moved through the various layers, as well as how the influence was either enhanced or controlled. He'd been a part of the group long enough to know most of the secrets — certainly enough of them to make sure that everyone netted would serve long sentences behind bars for their complicity.

But of the three Senators, he had been the one to be released last. Neither Burns nor Jackson had been willing to talk to the Justice Department agents or the FBI, so it had been up to him to fill in all the blanks. He was tired — bone tired and world-weary.

The elevator disgorged him into the hallway in front of his office door. As he pushed through, his secretary looked up at the interruption, startled. "Oh! Senator Can…" she paused. "Is everything OK?"

"Take a break, Sally," he ordered tiredly. "Go somewhere and have yourself a nice, early lunch — take your time coming back."

She wasn't buying it. She was an old campaign volunteer who had made herself indispensable to him while stumping for office and had ridden his coattails — and his campaign bus — into D.C. "Senator — George — what is it?"

"Go on, Sally," he reiterated. "Everything will be fine — I just want to spend some time alone, no calls, no interruptions. Pretend this is a holiday."

"I don't know…"

"Sally, get out." Canfield's limited hold on his patience was running low. "You'll be needing to make arrangements to head back to Montana anyway pretty soon — you'd better get at it."

The middle-aged woman who had mothered him for the last three years gasped as if he had struck her, then gathered up her purse out of her desk and hurried from the office with a choked sob. Canfield hung his head and regretted deeply the need to hurt such a good friend so badly. But she didn't need to be here right now. More than that. she didn't need to be dragged down with him — he owed it to her to save her that humiliation.

He walked to the door and locked it, and then walked over to the door to the inner office and locked that one behind him too once he was safely in his lair. He sighed deeply and walked over to the window. It was a pretty morning — an Indian summer morning. He gazed out at the grass and trees and cars and pedestrians below for a long and quiet moment.

Then he walked resolutely over to his desk and seated himself. Steeling himself, he opened the drawer and took out the box that he'd hidden away about the time he started to wonder what he'd gotten himself into. Steady fingers lifted the hinged lid, revealing the small handgun within, and the cartridge of bullets. He lifted the gun and calmly slid the cartridge into place, and then chambered a round.

A few moments later, the gun went off — and then all was still again.

Margaret steered the Lincoln into the driveway and hit the garage door opener. She steered the car to the side she hoped was the normal place for the big sedan, stopping expertly at a safe distance from the wall, and then turned off the engine. Finally she turned and looked at her passenger more closely than she had before, appreciating the opportunity to do so while unobserved, even by the subject of her study.

Sydney's face was grizzled and in desperate need of a shave, and he was pale — his knee must be bothering him again, she guessed. Relaxed and in slumber, his face had a careworn appearance, with deep creases between his brows that told of the burden of worry and guilt that he'd carried around with him for years. And yet there were crow's feet at the corners of his eyes that told her that he laughed and laughed often. She'd heard him laugh — had laughed with him. He had a nice laugh.

Her left hand lifted from the steering wheel and hovered for a moment as she debated touching his face or shaking a shoulder. She was tempted — touching his face would be far less expected of her and far more likely to rouse him from his slumber, but it was an intensely intimate gesture. Shaking the shoulder would be far safer.

"Sydney," she called gently, pushing on his shoulder, "you're home." He took a deep breath, but didn't awaken. She pushed at the shoulder a little more roughly. "Sydney, wake up. Time to go into the house and go to bed." He took another deep breath and hummed discontent at her, but still didn't awaken. She looked at him — he'd warned her that if he fell asleep in the car, he'd be tempted to just stay there. Then she smiled — and she'd warned him back that when the time came for him to wake up, she'd be able to do it.

Intimacy be damned — he was exhausted and needed to be resting someplace that wouldn't give him a stiff neck later. Her hand cupped a grizzled cheek gently and then patted it a few times. "Sydney, dear," she called again, "Time to get up."

He took another deep breath, but this time shifted slightly in his seat and then finally opened his eyes, only to find himself staring into brilliant blue eyes that danced with satisfaction and mischief. "Mich… Maggie?" he mumbled sleepily, not entirely awake yet and not entirely sure what he was doing awakening to gaze into a woman's eyes – much less those of Maggie Russell. "Where… What are you doing here?"

"I told you I could wake you up when the time came," she said, removing her hand and reaching for the door handle. "You're home — time to get you horizontal."

Sydney turned his head and then blinked several times in an effort to pull himself from the darkness of a rare spot of peaceful slumber. "You let me fall asleep," he said, reaching up in a childlike gesture and rubbing an eye.

"Not exactly," she replied saucily. "What I did was not keep you awake." She moved around the car and pulled open the back passenger door to retrieve crutches. "C'mon. Up and at 'em, Tiger! I'm not going to let you sleep in the car any longer than you already have."

"Good God!" he moaned as he shifted in the car seat and reached for the door handle. His knee had stiffened up and didn't want to cooperate at all, and his back and neck could definitely feel the consequences of having stayed in one position for too long.

"Need a hand?" she asked as the door swung open and he was moving very slowly getting his feet from the running board of the car onto the cement slab of the garage. "Cars can be almost as bad as man-eating couches…"

"This time I'm afraid I will," he said apologetically, reaching out to her and feeling her hand land beyond his elbow so as to get a good grip on him. "I've been on my knee too much — and I forgot how uncomfortable sleeping sitting up can get."

Once she had him balanced on his feet, she handed him his crutches and then stood back to make room for him to move. "Where are your pain pills?" she asked, closing the car door and then walking ahead of him to get the kitchen door open. "You look like you could use one…"

"Just get me into the den," he replied, shaking his head. "Those damned pills put me down for too long — I'm going to want to drive back into Dover later today."

"Sydney…"

"She's got nobody, Maggie — nobody but me and another broken-down old shrink named Zeke."

"I'm not debating that," she shook her head.

"Then don't try to talk me out of driving back later today," he grumbled at her as he drew close. "She has so many things stacked against her right now – I want to make sure she knows that there are those who care for her who want her to fight to stay alive. She needs someone there when she wakes up to show her that she matters enough to be worth a person putting themselves out for her."

"Let's get you some decent rest first," Maggie hedged, letting him move past her into the house. "Then we'll see what shape you're in later on…" Crystal was a very lucky young lady to have Sydney so determined to see to her welfare, she had to admit. "You aren't going to be any use to her if you're falling apart at the seams yourself, you know…"

"Deb? Kevin?" Sydney called, and then picked up the note that was sitting propped up on the kitchen table. He sighed to himself. "I should have waited for them — they went in to see Deb's father… No, on second thought…" he caught himself – he was glad he hadn't waited. Even exhausted, he enjoyed Maggie's company – and he wouldn't have liked to sit around that lobby any longer than he'd already done waiting for a ride. He let the note flutter to the table and moved slowly and painfully toward the doorway to the den.

"I need to call Missy, tell her we're back," Margaret said and headed for the telephone without waiting for an answer from the den.

"Yes?" Missy answered evidently in the middle of a chuckle – and Margaret could hear the sound of happy children's voices in the background.

"Just wanted to let you know that I'm back – and Sydney's on his way to lying down and getting some sleep," she reported. "I know you were saying that you were going to want to speak to him – I suggest that you get over here and be here when he wakes up. He intends to drive right on back to Dover."

"Do me a favor and ask him not to take off before I can talk to him?" Missy asked with a note of pleading.

"Is there something wrong? Maybe I can…"

"No, no," Missy shook her head firmly. "This is something that I need to tell him face to face – it just wouldn't do to tell him over the telephone or when everybody's in a hurry."

"OK," Margaret said, still not entirely sure what it was to which she was agreeing. "I'll tell him." She exchanged goodbyes and hung up the phone, and then walked into the den. "Missy wants me to tell you not to take off for Dover until she has a chance to talk to you about something."

"Oh yeah," Sydney mumbled as he settled himself on the couch in an infinitely more comfortable posture. "She mentioned something about that earlier…"

She gazed down at him and could see from the way he was trying to move that his knee was causing difficulties. "Can I at least talk you into taking a couple of Tylenol then? Just something to take the edge from your knee so that you can sleep?"

Tired chestnut eyes gazed up at her. "You make a pretty effective mother hen – did anybody ever tell you that?"

"I hear it quite often," she admitted and then lifted her head. "Did anybody ever tell you that you prove the old adage that doctors make the worst patients?"

Sydney chuckled and nodded. "Like you, I've heard that quite often lately."

"Well, what about that Tylenol?"

He sighed and closed his eyes. "If nothing else, it will help YOU feel better…"

Margaret's lips twitched. "So, you poor, long-suffering man, where do you keep them?"

"In the bathroom here," Sydney gestured with a hand. "And I owe you for that one. You're taking advantage of my exhaustion here…"

"As someone said in the car a little while ago, 'you noticed.'" She tossed at him as she walked past him toward the bathroom. "I have a feeling that with you, I'll need all the advantage I can get."

Sydney opened his eyes and watched her approach him again, tablets and a water glass in hand. "That sounds like a challenge." He waited until he'd taken the tablets and was handing her the glass back again before catching at her hand and holding her in place. "I don't usually turn down challenges," he told her in that lower registered voice.

"Promises, promises," she retorted with a slight blush.

He only smiled and pulled her hand to his lips for a brief moment, and then rested their joined hands against his chest. "Sit with me for a while?"

"For a while," she promised and watched the small smile grow a little. She wasn't at all uncomfortable sitting here with her hand in his possession. "Only if you promise to go to sleep," she said gently, bringing up the other hand to smooth back some of his mussed silver hair.

The chestnut eyes seemed lit from within for a moment. Yes, they were indeed playing with fire – both of them. He tightened his grip on her hand. "Anything for you," he purred and watched the blush deepen slightly.

"Maggie said that you were coming," Kevin said as he opened the door and let Missy into the house. "Is everything all right?"

"Fine." Missy smiled at the young man reassuringly. The get-well cards from two kids and a teddy bear were sitting in her car to be delivered when Mei announced that Sam would be up for visitors. Her afternoon, once Jarod had returned to the summerhouse and the family had had a quiet lunch together, had been spent at the Centre reading the three contracts that were pending. Xing-Li had been quite efficient at clearing her calendar for the rest of the day, so the moment she'd come to decisions on the contracts and sent them over to Tyler's office, she had called it a day and driven straight over.

Now she came into her father's house with Charles Parker's journal under her arm. The time had come to put an end to a very large secret. "Is he awake yet?"

"He's upstairs, showering and changing," Kevin announced and headed back toward the living room and all the files he was still slowly reading his way through. "He said he'd be down in a minute…"

"Ah, you're here." Sydney commented from the head of the stairs and then slowly worked his crutches and made his way down the stairs. "I was hoping that you'd get here soon, so we could have the time to talk before I need to take off for Dover." He tipped his head at her. "So what is it we need to talk about?"

"C'mon," Missy said, gesturing toward the den. "No disrespect, Kevin, but I need to talk to my… Sydney alone."

"No problem," the young Pretender said as he watched Sydney walk ahead of Miss Parker toward the back of the house.

"Now," said Sydney as he settled himself on the edge of the daybed, "what is this all about? You've been acting a little strangely…"

"I know," Missy admitted, and sat down next to him on the couch and handed him the journal. "And this is the reason why."

He stared at the name embossed on the cover and then looked up at her, startled. "Parker – where did you find this?"

She stared back. "You knew about this?" Her stomach twisted painfully. No! Please don't let him have lied to her about this…

"I knew about it, but I've never actually seen it," Sydney told her. "Catherine told me once that Charles kept a journal and wrote in it sporadically, but that she'd never ever been able to find it to read it herself. She always believed that it held any number of secrets that she would have given almost anything to uncover."

Missy breathed out in relief. He HADN'T known. Well, he would now… "I found it in Mr. Parker's desk – I hadn't cleaned it out, and evidently neither had Mr. Raines. When I was looking for a good place to keep my gun, I just stuck it in one of the two locking drawers – and finally noticed this when I was getting out the gun to protect myself last night."

"And you've read it." It wasn't a question – she looked as if she was aware of what was within.

"You need to read the first entry."

Sydney watched her face for a moment, hoping to get some clue as to what information she'd found that she'd thought so important that she had to share it with him so immediately, and then opened the journal. The date at the top of the page surprised him, and he looked into Missy's face again, only to find her grey eyes serious and watching him back. He looked back down at the tight and pointed script and read… and read…

Missy could tell the moment he'd hit the fifth paragraph, because suddenly her father's eyes widened and he looked up at her with pure anguish. "Read the rest of it," she urged quietly. After rubbing beneath his nose to try to stop the tears that were suddenly floating in his eyes from falling, he followed her instructions. Finally he'd read all he could, and he let the book fall into his lap closed.

"Daddy," was about all she managed to say before she had been gathered into his arms and embraced tightly.

He kissed the side of her head over and over again, finding it hard to believe that after all these years – years in which both of them had been forced by a truly twisted man to live a lie – he could claim his daughter as his own. "My God!" he finally whispered into her ear. "Catherine always suspected that something about her pregnancy wasn't right. Then she put it down to the fact that it was a twin pregnancy, and the little boy had died…" He opened his eyes suddenly. "My God!" he repeated. "Angelo…" His son.

"I'm changing my name," she told him firmly, hanging onto her father with all her might. "I told Jarod, and now I'm telling you: I will never answer to the name Parker again. My name is Melissa – Melissa Green."

"Does Jarod know?" He didn't want to let her go – it was as if he'd never really held her before in his life.

"He knows," she answered with a smile. "He told me that my name change would take some getting used to – but my name wouldn't be Parker much longer anyway, so that's not much of a problem…"

"What about Davy?"

She shook her head against his chest. "Davy already calls you Grandpa – this just gives you the right to the name over and above any that we agreed to before." She snuggled. "I'm just glad to know that the man that hit me and… well…" No, she didn't need to tell him that part. "I'm just glad that he wasn't my real father – that my real father always DID treat me with love and respect…"

"I didn't know," Sydney said softly and sadly, "and I didn't protect you from him. If I had known…" He tightened his embrace. "I failed you as badly as I failed Jarod. I always knew there was a tie between us – one that was more than just your being the child of one of my best friends and my patient."

"What's important is that we know now," Missy replied, "and we can stop with the idea that we have to pretend to be related. I can claim you as my father – and I intend to."

"I wish your mother had known."

"Maybe she did." Missy thought about it. "Maybe that was why she always trusted you, even when it was dangerous at the Centre to trust anyone. Maybe that was why she told you to take care of me before she faked her death – that even though she thought that I was Mr. Parker's child, she knew deep inside that I was yours…"

Sydney simply shook his head and held her close – his daughter. This was a moment beyond precious, one that he would remember and hold close in his heart to his dying day.

"You don't mind – my taking your name?"

"Are you kidding?" He let her go so that he could take her face between his hands. "Nothing would make me happier than that." He kissed her forehead again and pulled her back into his arms. "My daughter. Mine!" He could still hardly believe it. "My God!"

Missy held her father back and smiled contentedly. Slowly the lies that had been controlling her life for so long were unraveling, leaving behind them a truth that was at times disconcerting and painful, at other times uplifting and comforting. It was long since time to find a resolution to all the lies and deceit that had ruled their lives. She soaked up her father's unconditional love and hoped that finally, at long last, that day of resolution was at hand.

Crystal pushed back against the darkness and forced herself back into wakefulness. The heavy load on her chest hadn't eased, but the darkness was not longer quite so insistent on keeping her removed from the world. She stirred and moaned, and then opened her eyes.

The last three times she had awakened, she'd been amazed to find Doctor Cavendish sitting with her. His gentle concern had sustained her and surprised her – she knew that he'd become a little fond of her because she'd been willing to listen to a lonely old man spin stories, but had no idea how deep that fondness had evidently gone since her confrontation with her father. But this time, when her eyes finally agreed to open a little, it was Sydney's face that slowly swam into focus. "Sydney…" she whispered, glad to have him there with her again.

"Zeke told me that you'd been awakening off and on," he smiled at her and caught up her hand. "I was hoping you'd wake up for me once while I was here – before they throw me out for the evening."

"What… doctor… say?" It still hurt like Hell to talk, but she had to know… "Tell… me… truth…"

Sydney smiled a little more widely. "You just keep doing as you have been, sweetheart, and you'll walk out of this place. You're doing much better than you were even this morning. Your doctor is thrilled with you."

"Not… gonna… die?"

"No, cheri, you're not going to die." He patted her hand. Not if he could help it, by God!

"My… mom…"

Sydney's face grew sad. "The police told Missy about her, and she told me. I'm so sorry…"

A tear fell onto the snow-white cheek. "All… alone… now… for… real…"

Sydney's hand tightened on hers and was joined by his other hand. "No, sweetheart, you're not alone. You have me, and Zeke, and Xing-Li – all of your friends… You're not alone, and you'll never be alone again. I promise. I told you that you belonged at that family celebration, didn't I? I wasn't lying."

The dark eyes were swimming. It hurt so much to breathe, and yet the words he'd said were what she was clinging to desperately. Still… "Don't… deserve…"

"Shhhh…" he soothed softly and reached out to smooth dark hair back from her face. "Whether you do or not isn't important. You just get well now, OK?" The nurse at the ICU station rose to her feet and gestured to him with one flat hand laid atop a vertical hand like a football referee's signal. "Look, they're going to want to kick me out for the night so you can get some uninterrupted rest. But I'll be back to see you tomorrow – and I want you to call me whenever you feel like talking. Get them to hold the phone for you, OK?"

"You'll… be… back?" The dark eyes were filled with a tenuous hope.

"Zeke says he'll be in to see you in the morning," Sydney told her as he struggled to his feet, "and I'll be in tomorrow afternoon and into the evening. I promise. Maybe you'll be awake a little more, and we can visit longer." He bent over her and kissed her forehead. "Sleep well, ma petite. Get better. We're waiting for you to come home."

He could feel her gaze follow him as he made his way out the door, then paused, turned, and waved at her. Her fingers lifted from the blanket weakly and waved back at him.

Sydney's heart was light as he made his way out of the hospital and across the parking lot to where he'd left his car. He had his family — and it really WAS his family — waiting for him in Blue Cove, along with a woman he was finding it more and more difficult not to think about in quiet, private moments. And now, with Crystal slowly turning the corner and moving away from death's door, he had something genuine to smile about.

The future looked brighter than it had in a very long while. Sydney climbed into his car and turned the ignition. It was time to go home.

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	34. Epilogue

Resolutions – 34

Epilogue

by MMB

Ginger squirmed yet again beneath the patient fingers of both her grandmother and aunt as the two women tucked the silk flowers into the French braiding down the back of the child's head. "But Gamma, I wanted to wear my butterflies!" she exclaimed petulantly.

Margaret and Emily exchanged glances, and Margaret shook her head in defeat. "If I go get the butterflies, will you PLEASE hold still so we can finish this?" she asked in exasperation.

"OK," Ginger smiled in delight at her grandmother through the mirror.

"I'll be back," Margaret promised her daughter and left Emily in charge of the finishing touches with the silk flowers.

"You've grown so much, I'm surprised the dress fits," Emily commented, turning Ginger to take a good look at the total picture. "You sure don't look much like our Mouse anymore."

"I'm a Sprite, Aunt Emmie," Ginger reminded her, smiling at the return to a very old joke that hadn't been aired for months. She stared at her aunt's tummy, which had grown huge in the time since she'd seen her last, and put out a cautious hand. She hadn't had much chance to talk to her aunt alone since the plane had landed the afternoon before. "That's the baby?" she asked in quiet awe.

"Mmm-hmmm," Emily nodded, then took Ginger's hand and put it over the spot where the baby had been kicking last and held it there until…

"Oh!" Ginger's eyes were wide and startled as she looked up at her aunt. "He kicked me!"

"Or she," Emily reminded her with a smile. "It could be a girl too, you know…"

"Here you are," Margaret said, walking up behind her granddaughter and turning her back to the mirror. "Do you want them in front or back?"

"In back, Gamma, with the flowers," Ginger told her, surprised that Gamma didn't know this already. "Butterflies like flowers."

There was a knock on the door, and then Jarod was peeking around the corner. "Can I come in?"

"Of course you can, dear," Margaret replied, backing away from Ginger, "and you can see how sweet Sprite looks in her special dress for a special day."

"Oh, now, aren't you a vision?" Jarod smiled. Ginger's butterflies sparkled delightfully from amid the silken miniature roses that garlanded the girl's hair. The pink dress fit perfectly — and with the black patent leather shoes and white anklets, Ginger looked perfect for her role as flower girl in the wedding procession.

"Do I look OK, Daddy?" she asked, spinning around quickly and making her skirt fan out in a way that none of her other fancier clothes would.

"Better than OK, Sprite. You look almost as beautiful as your Mommy."

"Who's the only person you're not supposed to see — and she isn't even here right now," Emily reminded her brother with a grin. "She's safe and sound over at her father's house."

"Don't remind me," Jarod grumbled good-naturedly. He'd gotten a thorough indoctrination into the traditions and little superstitions of weddings when Sam and Mei-Chiang had gotten married several months ago — but that didn't mean that he didn't miss having Missy around him today. He was nervous and jumpy, and even having his brothers around to talk and joke with again wasn't helping. He'd be glad when the wedding was over and he could have Missy at his side again — and Sydney, who had stayed at home to help his daughter stay calm too.

"Now that you're all dressed up, Sprite, you're going to have to stay nice and quiet so you don't mess up your dress or hair," Margaret warned her granddaughter. "What are you going to do? Play with your dollhouse?"

"Can't I play with Sammy and Davy?"

"No." The word came from both Jarod and Margaret in unison. "You know how Davy gets when Sammy's around," Jarod explained. "You used to get very tired of that. Besides, I don't think Gamma wants to have to put the flowers back in your hair again if you run around too much and they start falling out…"

"That's for sure," Margaret mumbled to Emily in a low voice, making her daughter chortle quietly.

"Yeah, OK…" Ginger moped for a moment. "I need to go find Bear," she exclaimed suddenly and bolted from the room.

"She's not going to…" Emily worried, and then relaxed when she heard Ginger's bedroom door slam. "No, I guess not."

"How are you holding up?" Margaret asked her oldest son, moving to stand in front of him and straighten the white tie and smooth down the tuxedo shirt. "You look like you've eaten Mexican jumping beans, Jarod," she commented when he shifted away from her.

"Easy for you to say," he grumbled. "You're not getting married."

"Calm down, Jarod," Emily moved forward to straighten the shirt again. "For God's sake, you've been living with her for over half a year now — this is just a formality." She looked up into the disbelieving dark eyes of her brother, so much like her own, and sighed. "Yeah, I suppose I'd be on pins and needles too."

Jarod decided to force himself to think of something else for a while. "You look nice, Mom, Em." Both women were wearing a soft pastel green — Emily's dress was long and flowing from a high empire waist to accommodate her stomach, where Margaret's was more form fitting and tailored at the bodice and waist with a chiffon skirt swirling below. Emily's short, dark hair was curled softly around her face, where Margaret's long red and silver locks were held back from her face with sparkling silver combs but otherwise allowed to tumble down her neck and back in ample abandon.

"Thank you," Margaret smiled at her son, then clasped a hand tightly. "And you are one incredibly handsome fellow, you know…"

"Imagine, my brother can clean up pretty decently when he wants to," Emily smirked at him.

There was another knock on the door, and then Jay and Ethan were walking in. "Ah-HAH! So this is where you're hiding now," Ethan teased his half-brother.

"Now THIS is true Russell spirit," Jay chuckled, "hanging out with the ladies."

"Where's Nathan? I thought he was with you two…" Emily asked when her husband didn't materialize behind his brothers-in-law.

"He's keeping the boys occupied in the library until things get started," Ethan told her. "Davy told Sammy about the tree house over at his Grandpa Sydney's, and Sammy was starting to fuss about going over there to play. Nathan's trying to keep them busy and out of trouble playing computer games on Jarod's laptop until things get going — after which I hope Sydney will be ready for visitors…"

"Who all else is here?" Margaret asked Ethan.

"Kevin Green and a Mr. Broots arrived a few minutes ago," Ethan said with a frown. "At least, that's what I THINK their names are. I haven't exactly got them all straight yet…" He grinned at Jarod. "You never said that your family over here was so big."

"I suppose I should go downstairs and say hello," Jarod pulled on his black satin vest. "Besides, somebody who knows Sam and Tyler needs to be there to greet them — or they'll think they came to the wrong place." He looked at his wristwatch. Only an hour left before…

There was a soft knock on the door, and then Sydney's voice came through the wood: "Is it safe to come in?"

Deb chuckled, pulling the zipper on the back of Missy's wedding gown up to the top. "Now it is," she called out and went around front to help adjust the bodice. "There," she said with a note of finality. "All that's left is the veil — and we can wait on that for a bit. Lemme go see how Crystal's coming," she added after getting a glance at her grandfather's face. "I'll be back in a bit."

Missy continued to adjust herself in the mirror as Deb kissed Sydney on the cheek and then pulled the door closed, leaving the two of them alone. Then, taking a deep breath, she turned to face her father. "Well, what do you think?"

Sydney's eyes shone with pride and happiness — his daughter was stunning in her wedding gown of off-white chiffon and brocade, her shining, dark hair a startling counterpoint. "Magnifique, ma cheri," he said with a wide smile. "You are beyond beautiful." He stepped close and turned her with a finger at a shoulder. "I'm wagering good money that Jarod's jaw hits the floor when he sees you."

Missy put her arms around his waist and leaned in carefully. "I never thought I'd see this day."

"Believe me, having the opportunity to walk a daughter down the aisle wasn't something I ever thought I'd be able to do either," he answered, wrapping his arms around her gently. "I love you so much, cheri…"

Missy closed her eyes and held on tightly. "I love you too, Daddy."

As close as she and her father had been before the amazing revelations of Charles Parker's journal, nothing could have prepared her for the closeness they had achieve afterwards. It was as if finding that the tie that both had only wished for actually existed opened the floodgates between the two, and the sharing of their memories good and bad had been a healing experience for both. Now, when she thought of the days when the two of them were merely work colleagues, she found the distance she'd maintained difficult to swallow. She loved him with all her heart, just as she'd always wanted to be able to love a father — and he doted on her and her children completely and shamelessly.

In order to give her a sense of where she came from, to introduce her to her real family, Sydney's lingering reservations at talking about his life before she had met him finally dissolved. He regaled Missy over the course of many quiet and private evenings with stories of his childhood and youth, of his parents and beloved grandmother, of his childhood home in Lyons that had been destroyed in the war, of his utter dependence on his twin for a sense of family. He no longer balked at telling her about the concentration camp and what had happened to him — to both him and Jacob — and the honesty and candor needed to tell the stories properly went a long way toward relieving him of the need to deal with them in nightmares.

Missy, in return, opened up at long last about her own childhood and youth — her love and devotion to her mother, her fear and loathing of a father figure that had beaten and molested her for so long. Sydney had taken the news of the full extent of her abuse harder than she had anticipated, and yet his raging against the Parkers allowed her to finally express in clear words all the thoughts and feelings she'd held down so very tightly for so long. Through his harsh and complete repudiation of the kind of treatment she'd received at Parker's hands, he helped wash away any lingering doubts about self-worth. And his devotion to her otherwise gave her an even greater sense of security as a person and as a mother to her own children.

"I was wondering if you could give me a hand…" he said finally after he felt and heard her pull a long breath of contentment. He knew she'd been nervous as this day had drawn closer — giving her the opportunity to recharge a little had been three quarters of his reason for not going to the townhouse to prepare for the wedding there. Then again, it would be easier to ask HER for help…

"With what?" Missy pushed herself away far enough that she could look at him.

Sydney flicked his fingers at his tie. "I never can get those things to work right…"

Missy chuckled, removed her hands from around his waist and busied herself with tying a proper bow tie, happy that she was doing this small intimate task for a father who loved her as if it were a regular occurance. "How DID you manage at all those fancy affairs I can remember happening at the Centre back when I was a kid? You always managed to look pretty sharp back then…"

"Simple — I didn't manage anything," he replied, lifting his chin to give her more room to work. "If they wanted me in one of these monkey suits, either they let me use a snap-on tie or put up with one that was crooked."

"There." Her hands smoothed the tie into place and then rested against his chest. "You look very handsome, monkey suit or no."

He kissed her forehead gently. "I should go now, and let Deb and Crystal help you finish getting ready. The limousine will be here in just a little bit, you know…"

The shortness of time caught her by surprise. "Daddy…"

Sydney cupped a shoulder gently in one hand. "This is your day, ma petite. You know this is what you want."

"I know, but…"

"But nothing," he soothed. "You're going to remind that Pretender of yours that brains isn't the only thing." His lips twitched. "Sometimes beauty wins. And let me tell you, the object lesson today will be long remembered. He's not going to know what hit him."

Her lips twitched as well, and soon both were grinning. "Thanks."

He bent forward and kissed a cheek, then opened the bedroom door. "Deb? Crystal? I think we need a veil here — it's almost time…"

The back yard of the townhouse had already seen a similar event the autumn before — a very intimate affair where close friends celebrated Sam and Mei-Chiang's wedding. Now it was springtime, and the backyard this time had many more chairs filling the space between the back of the house and the gazebo where Jarod and Missy would take their vows. Business associates and department heads from the Centre had nearly filled the seats allotted, leaving only the reserved front rows for family intimates. Nature had cooperated with an unusually warm day for that time of year, a blue sky arched overhead and the fresh green of new leaves on the trees and vines made for a refreshing counterpoint. Everywhere were white ribbons trailing lazily in the gentle breeze.

As the soft strokes of music from the string quartet filled the yard, Ethan walked his foster mother to her place in the very first row to sit next to her daughter and her family. Nathan and Emily had placed Sammy between them, and the two held hands across their son's back both in enjoyment of the occasion and as a quick way to control their headstrong son. Margaret bent forward slightly and smiled across the aisle, where Kevin nodded at her past the empty spot where Sydney would sit eventually. Beside him sat Crystal, still a little pale from her near brush with death and long recuperation but pretty in an apricot-colored pantsuit with white silk flowers tucked into her French braid. Next to her sat Sam and Mei-Chiang, and beyond them, Missy's assistant Cody Tyler and Xing-Li. Beyond Xing-Li sat the inscrutable Mr. Ikeda, sitting next to a charming Japanese woman that she assumed was his wife, freshly arrived from Tokyo. On the edge of that row was the wheelchair that held Mr. Broots — a man Margaret had yet to meet other than very superficially at the dinner the evening before.

Margaret hadn't had a chance to do much more than say hello to any of the others yet since she'd arrived the day before, but she knew she'd have at least a little news to catch up on once the reception started. There was a bright sparkle on Xing-Li's left hand that hadn't been there the last time she'd seen the woman, and Tyler seemed quite content to keep close possession of the other hand. Kevin had gained an element of self-sufficiency in the months since last she'd seen him too, and had that quiet and intense intelligent air about him that so reminded Margaret of her sons.

The music swelled, and onto the steps of the gazebo near Father Murphy came first Jarod, then Ethan, both looking impressive in their tuxedos. As the onlookers rose, first Davy walked toward the gazebo with a pillow in his hands, then Ginger, spreading petals from a small basket on her arm. Behind her, Deb carried a single pink rosebud trailing white ribbons; and as she moved down the aisle, a vision in pink and shimmering golden hair, the sparkle of the diamond that Kevin had given her several months earlier was visible.

Then the music swelled yet again, and as the onlookers rose, Missy came down the aisle with her hand tucked into her father's arm. Margaret caught her breath at how lovely Missy was with her gown and veil, and she turned to catch the reaction Jarod had to his first glimpse of his bride and then chuckled. His face had slacked into shock at first, but he was slowly recovering and regaining that contented, cat-ate-the-canary smirk that came only when he was inordinately pleased with either himself or the situation around him. Margaret now let her eyes rest on Sydney, pleased to see that while he still had a slight limp, he wasn't even using his cane anymore. She had to admit that he cut a fine figure in a tuxedo, and the smile on his face was of the deepest pride and happiness that was the prerogative of being the father of the bride. She turned and gave over her attention to what was going on at the gazebo, allowing herself to be caught up in the emotions.

Missy and Sydney arrived in front of the minister as the music swelled to a climax and died away. Father Murphy had a few words of welcome to start the service and then intoned loudly enough for the audience to hear, "Who gives this woman to be married?"

"I do," Sydney responded firmly, according to tradition. He impulsively kissed her cheek before stepping aside to let Jarod take his place at Missy's side. He returned to the place that had been left vacant for him and took his seat with the others. His eyes were sparkling, and he gave Margaret a wide and warm smile just before turning his attention back to what was going on at the gazebo.

Jarod could hardly believe the beautiful creature at his side was the same woman he'd been living with for the last half a year. Never, in all the times he'd SIM'ed being the groom in a wedding, had he imagined that his senses would have gone so suddenly on overload. Father Murphy was continuing with the traditional words and prayers, and finally the slightly louder invitation that "if any man knows just cause that this man and this woman not be joined, speak now — or forever hold your peace," and it was only barely registering. Jarod was bemused. This was his wedding day, and he was marrying the most beautiful woman in the world. He stumbled over his answer when asked if he took her for his wife, no matter what the conditions. Of course he did! How could anyone believe otherwise?

For her part, Missy was entranced by the tall, dark and extremely handsome man who stood at her side and with a slight stammer agreed to take her as his wife, but when her turn came, found the "I do" no more simple to say. She had been independent and self-sufficient her whole life — and here she was, putting her entire life into the hands of another. Then her grey gaze lifted to look into Jarod's and her insecurity evaporated. Her voice steadied, and she answered with conviction. They were two halves of one whole — always had been, always would be — and this didn't make either of them any less than they'd been before. If anything, it made them greater than the sum of the two parts. She did indeed take Jarod as her husband.

Jarod felt the impact of that grey gaze all the way to the bottoms of his shoes. He heard Father Murphy on the edges of his attention prompting him through the vows, and he repeated the words with the proper break. And yet, despite the almost automatic recitation, he knew he meant each and every thing he said. Nothing, nobody, would ever be able to tear him away from her again – not even the most dire or tragic of circumstances. For the briefest moment, his mind flashed back to the face of the little girl who had given him his first kiss and so captured his heart. This, then, was the end of that tale.

Missy felt as if she were drowning in those chocolate brown orbs and was grateful for Father Murphy's gentle prompting to help her through her vows. She belonged to him — and he belonged to her. This is the way it had always been meant to be with them, whether it was "you run, I chase" or the long years of no communications at all. Nobody had ever been able to take his place in her heart, and now nobody ever would.

Davy was called forward to give the priest the wedding bands, and then Jarod had Missy's hand in his and was slipping that slim ring of gold onto her finger. Missy felt the brand that the ring represented echo through her — and then it was her turn to take his hand in hers and return the gesture. Jarod' eyes watched her nimble fingers slip the band into place and then latched onto her grey gaze again as Father Murphy pronounced them husband and wife and invited him to kiss his bride. Missy smiled at him almost shyly as he lifted the veil away from her face and then lowered his lips to hers gently.

The music from the quartet swelled elegantly again as Father Murphy introduced the newly married pair for the very first time in public as Doctor and Mrs. Jarod Russell, and then the pair headed down the aisle amid the round of applause. Ethan leant his arm to Deb and escorted her down the aisle again, and Davy even waited for his little sister to walk with him.

As the music continued, Sydney rose from his seat and, stepping across the aisle, extended his arm to Margaret. This hadn't been the way it had been practiced at the rehearsal — the night before, he had escorted Crystal down the aisle and out to where the reception would later be held — but Margaret smiled and rose and put her hand on his arm, accepting the gesture. At her side, Jay blinked, and then decided that maybe this cross-aisle escorting wasn't such a bad idea. He rose and went across the aisle and offered his arm to the very pretty girl with the white flowers in her dark hair who had been sitting next to Sydney. She blinked up at him, startled, then glanced to the other side at Kevin. He was no help, being just as bemused about the whole thing as she was and imagining what it would be like to be the groom rather than just an onlooker. So Crystal decided to go with the flow, rose and let this very handsome man who looked remarkably like Jarod take her hand and lead her down the aisle.

Emily watched with deep suspicion the dapper and elegantly attired gentleman who had claimed her mother's attention as the wedding ended. She had not been given any reason to dislike Sydney outside the obvious ancient history that had evidently been generally forgiven — indeed, her mother had come home from her time over here in the fall speaking very highly of the man who had raised her brother deep inside the Centre. And yet, Emily continued to feel that he had somehow cheated her of her brother's presence in her life as she'd grown and matured, and she was having to struggle with herself to keep that animosity to herself, in honor of her brother and his new bride.

"What is it, honey?" Nathan asked solicitously. Emily had been quiet and almost withdrawn for the whole meal. "Is it the baby?" She was, after all, only a month from her due date.

"No," she relented and smiled at him. "I'm just in a funk — and having trouble with the idea of Mom with… HIM." She pointed to where Sydney had leaned close to Margaret's ear to tell her something, only to have Margaret chuckle at the apparently private joke and then give him the kind of smile that she had once reserved solely for her husband.

"Your father's been dead almost a year…"

"Nine months," she corrected him sharply. "Technically, she shouldn't even be out of mourning yet."

"What?" Nathan looked at her with shock and surprise. "You'd force her to wear black and withdraw from the world?"

"No, but…" Emily shook her head at the difficulty she was having expressing her feelings. "Why does she have to suddenly wake up for HIM?"

"Have you considered that it's because he's a nice guy after all?" Nathan suggested dryly. "God knows that you thought Missy was an absolute ogre until she spent time with us and you got to know her. You two were pretty fast and good friends by the time she left…"

"That's different."

Nathan's brows shot up towards his hairline. "Really? Why? Do you think it was a bigger sin to take Jarod and try to protect him and teach him right from wrong than it was to chase him all over the globe and occasionally take shots at him?" Emily looked at him in frustration. "I'm just saying that before you start getting all hot and bothered, you should at least take the time to talk to the man — and like Missy, find out if he really IS the ogre you've thought him to be all this time." Nathan picked up his fork and stabbed a piece of barbecued meat.

"What's going on here?" Jay asked, putting his plate down on the table and taking the chair next to his sister. "Hey, Em, what has the storm clouds gathering?"

"Look!" she pointed at the head table where Jarod and Missy and Sydney and Margaret were sitting.

"What about it?"

"She's not happy at the attention your mom is giving Sydney," Nathan clued in his brother-in-law.

"Ease up, Em," Jay told her in a no-nonsense tone. "We've been wrong about him. I got a chance to talk to him myself last night after the practice and before the dinner — and I found out a few things I didn't know. For one thing, all this time I thought he was just a pawn of the Centre when he became my mentor just before Jarod found me. Now I find out he'd demanded to be put in charge of me only so that he could leak my whereabouts to Jarod, so I could be stolen from the Centre before they shipped me to Africa."

"And you believed him?" Emily stared. "Why didn't Jarod tell you that?"

"He did," Jay answered with a guilty look and then a sniff. "I didn't want to believe him at the time. After I talked to Sydney, I realized that I've been holding a grudge for no good reason."

"He still kept Jarod at the Centre almost his entire life…"

"Sydney didn't," Jay shook his head. "That was Raines and the others. I remember Raines." He shivered. "I remember being afraid to cry because Raines would have the guards beat me for it. I didn't have a Sydney. Ethan didn't either — and look what Raines did to HIM! Or have you forgotten…"

"I haven't forgotten." Emily closed her eyes. Ethan's screams during his nightmares had been eerie, blood-curdling things — and her youngest brother steadfastly refused to talk about his experiences at the Centre at all, except for describing his brief contacts with his half sister before coming to California. "Jarod had nightmares too — you know that…"

"Yeah," Jay nodded, "and if you remember, they usually were either about being stolen or something RAINES did to him. Sydney himself was never a part of those dreams."

"Damn it, you two, stop defending the man!" Emily burst out and got to her feet as quickly as her bulk would allow and stormed away.

Nathan watched his wife walk up the back steps and into the house with a thoughtful look on his face. He glanced at his brother-in-law. "You think I should…"

"Nah. Let her be," Jay advised. "I'll find a chance to warn Mom that Em's on the warpath about her choice in escort, as if it really matters to her at the moment. Look at her…" He gazed at his mother, basking in the attention of the very interested Sydney. "She hasn't been this happy since we first found Dad."

"Hey there, Princess," Sam said gently, coming up to the banquet table and finding Ginger stretching as far as she could toward the three-tiered dessert. "What do you want?"

"More cake," she answered, pointing. "Please," she added, remembering her manners.

Sam reached out easily and snagged an apple instead and put it on her plate. "Maybe you'd better have one of these instead. Your mom will be in a tizzy if all you eat today is just dessert…" Ginger had shown signs of having the same dedication to nutrition that her dad did — much to her mother's dismay.

"I already had a sandwich and some salad," she told him quickly. "Mommy fixed my plate for me."

"OK, then, if you've eaten what your Mom wanted you to…" Sam took the apple off of the plate and put a relatively small piece of the wedding cake in its place. "Better?"

"Yeah!" She looked up at him with a dazzling smile. "Can I have a tip later?" Sam's tips really WERE the best after Daddy's… and Daddy was going to be gone for a few days with Mommy soon.

"We'll see, Princess — maybe after most of these nice folks go home and it's just US, you know…" Sam sighed. His left arm would be sore as hell by the end of the day once Ginger talked him into giving her his tips — picking her up and tipping her over upside down. No doubt Davy would want the same – and there was now another little boy running around with him…

"OK." She looked up at him, her smile dampening some. "How's your shoulder today?"

"It's doing fine, Sprite, I promise. After all, I can give you tips now, can't I?" The status check on his health was a side effect of his time under her care — she had taken her mother's injunction to help him very seriously.

"It's all healed up now?" The dark eyes were wide. "You're not hurting anymore?"

Sam put his plate on the buffet table next to him and squatted down so that he was at eye level with Ginger. "We talked about this before, haven't we, Princess?" In fact his direct participation in Jarod's efforts to help his daughter process the horrific scene she'd been a part of had been essential. Ginger had become both very protective of Sam — taking care of the man who had saved her mother having become a paramount motivator — and terrified that he would be injured again.

There were still times, random and unexpected, when she would suddenly remember the blood and the terror. In those moments, it was as if her mind had taken her back to that horrible night and her time on the floor next to Sam trying to get the gushing gunshot wound to stop bleeding. Once in that state, she would need quite a bit of reassurance that her world was a safe one before she'd calm down again. She'd had her share of nightmares about the ordeal, especially after things calmed down and she'd moved back into the big house where everything had happened. Over time, the adults had come to recognize that only Sam himself could reassure her properly when that happened. The Security Chief had patiently put up with a frantic child being brought to his home — sometimes quite late at night — to receive his attention several times at first. Thankfully, over time, the incidents had slowly spaced themselves out to become rarer and rarer and lost the hysterical edge. Now she would just become very, very wary and insecure.

But the last thing Sam had expected was for her to flash like this on her mom and dad's special day. "You know that my arm has been healed for a long time. There's no more blood, honest. You know this, don't you?"

Ginger dropped guilty eyes from his and self-consciously ran her finger over the smooth fabric of his suit jacket. "Yeah…"

Sam took her plate from her and put it on the buffet table next to his own. "Come here." He knew the one and only way to convince her that things were better now, and he opened up his arms and gathered the little girl to him. "Better now?" he said gently as she wrapped her arms around his neck tightly and felt his big, strong arms fold around her.

"No bad men will come to our house today, will they?" she asked in a small voice.

Sam finally figured out what was really going on. "Are you feeling a little scared because there are too many strange people hanging around today?" he asked, planting a kiss against a cheek.

"Uh-huh." She nodded against his neck.

"No, Princess, there are no bad men coming to your house today. All the bad men are in jail, and they'll be there for a very long time." The last verdict had come down only the previous Friday – rejecting Tom Jackson's defense of diminished mental capacity and finding him guilty of all charges against him.

"Promise?"

"I promise, baby doll." He kissed her again and set her away from him. "Now, where is Bear?" The toy remained a security blanket for her and was rarely very far from her, especially in situations such as these.

"Sitting in my chair so I'll have it when I get back," she said knowingly. "He's patient."

"You'd better get back to him, then, before he gets lonely." Sam handed her plate to her and rose to his full height. "Tell him I said hello, OK?"

"OK." The little girl smiled up at him again. "Thanks, Sam."

"At your service, Princess."

"I remember her being terrified of you the first time she saw you," Ethan commented as Sam watched his boss' little girl skip back toward where she was sharing a table with Davy and Sammy. He had walked up behind the two during the end of their exchange and just quietly observed.

Sam turned and then gave Missy's half brother a smile as he shook the man's hand. "Not anymore," he replied. "not for quite a while now."

"Sounds like she keeps pretty good track of you."

Sam's smile turned very indulgent. "She's a lot like her mother."

"Now that doesn't surprise me much." Ethan clapped the big Security Chief on the back and moved on by, heartened to see that the damaged little girl his brother had adopted had made such great strides in putting her life back together.

"Thought you should know," Nathan said very softly into Margaret's ear that was not next to Sydney, "that Emily is upset with you, in case you want to go into the house and try to talk some sense to her…"

"Whatever is she upset with me for?" Margaret frowned.

"You know how she feels about your friend here," he replied with his lips even closer to her ear. The brilliant blue came up to gaze into his understanding face. "Jay and I tried to talk to her, and got nowhere. I just thought you'd like to know…" He straightened and headed off toward where Jay was talking to Kevin and Deb.

"Damn!" Margaret swore to herself under her breath. Emily had promised…

"What's the matter?" Sydney bent close solicitously.

Margaret gazed up into his gentle chestnut eyes apologetically. "My daughter," she said unhappily, "it seems, is unhappy with my spending so much time with you. She still hasn't forgiven you for your part in…" She grimaced. "You know…"

"Ah." Sydney looked out over the crowd of wedding guests for the other green gown that was Margaret's daughter but didn't see her. "Where did she go?"

"Into the house." She put a restraining hand on his arm. "Don't. You don't have to…"

"Ignoring the problem isn't going to make it go away," he told her with a gentle and sad smile. "Maybe the time has come for her to voice some of her feelings to the actual target of them, rather than continue to spout off at everyone else but."

"She's got a hot temper…" she warned him.

"Any hotter than Jarod's?" was the response. When after a moment's thought, she shook her head, he patted her hand on his arm and rose. "Save my place here, I'll be back in a bit."

Sydney moved smoothly through the collected guests and finally up the back steps and into the house. Without trying to look like he was searching for someone, he wandered through the rooms. His search was fruitless until he ended up in front of the closed door to the library. He knocked softly and pushed the door open to find her staring out one of the tall windows at the car-lined street in front of the house. "I hope I'm not disturbing you," he said carefully, moving into the room and shutting the door behind him.

"You are," she bit off, deliberately turning her back on him. "Please go away. You and I have nothing to talk about."

"On the contrary, we have at least one necessary discussion pending that I think should happen sooner rather than later," he corrected her gently and moved to a spot on the opposite side of the window, far enough away to give her a comfort zone, yet close enough to be able to observe her face. "I understand you are angry with me."

Chocolate eyes that were so much like his former protégé's came up to meet his sharply. "Angry doesn't begin to describe how I feel," she retorted.

"OK," he responded mildly, leaning against the wall by the window ready to listen to whatever he'd be able to encourage her to say. "How do you feel?"

"I really don't want to talk about this," she responded, turning away from him again.

"You're hurting your mother…"

"How dare you!" She spun at him, eyes flaming. "YOU hurt her, for years – you had her son, my brother, and kept him trapped underground in that… PLACE. And now you go sniffing around her like a dog after another man's…"

"Are you angry at me for hurting your mother, or are you angry because I hurt you?" he pressed pointedly, ignoring the insult. "Because if you're angry at me on behalf of your mother, then you need to have a talk with her. She and I have settled our scores between us."

"Not for me…"

"That's what I thought," he nodded. "This is about your feelings, then." He watched her face closely. "Well, here I am, in the flesh. Here's your chance to unload on me the way you've wanted to for years. Take it."

"And have Jarod take me to task for daring to speak ill of his beloved mentor? I don't think so…"

"Jarod's not here," he reminded her gently. "It's just the two of us here, and nothing you say will go any further."

The chocolate eyes stared at him in impotent frustration for a while, and then she turned away from him again. "Stop it, damn it!"

"Stop what?"

"Stop being so normal, so… nice." She backed away, putting more space between herself and this enigmatic man with the indescribable accent whose words were confusing her. "I've hated you for a very long time."

"I know that," he answered mildly. "You hold me responsible for keeping you and your brother apart."

"It's true, isn't it?" she cried.

"In a manner of speaking, yes," he admitted without rancor. "I raised your brother and worked with him for nearly thirty years before he escaped. That's not a secret, nor do I deny it."

"You stole him from us…"

"Now that," Sydney said with an uplifted finger, "isn't true. I had no part in the Centre's stealing your brother. I was presented with a little boy that I was told was an orphan. It wasn't until your brother escaped and the Centre lies began to unravel that I discovered the truth."

"Mom said she saw you…"

"No." He shook his head gently. "That was my brother, Jacob. He's dead now."

She stared at him again for a long moment, then turned away again. "You're confusing me."

"I'm telling you the truth," he countered gently. "I won't hide or deny things that I actually did do – and there is enough of that, believe me – but I won't let you continue to make me responsible for things I did NOT do."

"I don't believe you. You'd have done anything to keep him near you, to hang onto him…"

Sydney smiled sadly. "Did Jarod ever tell you of the last time I saw him before he put your family together?"

She kept her back to him. "No…"

"It was after Mr. Parker died, and he'd just missed finding your mother on Carthis. He came to see me, wondering if the Centre would ever stop hunting him. I told him that I doubted it – that for as long as he played 'catch me if you can', the Centre would hound him with everything it could. I could tell he was getting tired of the game – and so I told him to stop playing."

Emily turned to look at him, her face a study in disbelief. "You're lying to me."

"You can ask Jarod if you don't believe me," Sydney simply shrugged. "I told him that he deserved a life, and that with the Centre constantly on his heels, he'd never get one. I told him to leave – to drop off the Centre radar screens – to vanish and cut off all contact with all of us in order to find all of you and put together the family he'd always wanted." Sydney's face grew distant with the power of the memory. "And then, once I'd finally convinced him to leave, I walked away from him – and I didn't hear from him again until after your father's death." His eyes shone with the pain of the memory. "It was quite possibly the most difficult thing I'd ever done in my life — and the one thing in my life that I'll never regret."

The chocolate eyes were thoroughly confused. "Why?"

"Because the time had come for him to let go of me and find you," Sydney offered simply. "And he did."

"But he went back to you…"

"But that was not my doing," he shook his head. "I walked away, and as time went by and it began to seem as if he had disappeared completely, I grieved for him as if he'd died – and then moved on with my life. I had no idea that he'd ever get in contact with me again."

She looked at him for a very long time. "It wasn't fair, keeping him locked up like that."

"No," he agreed, his gaze not flinching from hers, "it wasn't."

There was another long pause while she stared out the window and considered everything he'd said. Then she turned back. "What about Mom?"

He gazed up at her, startled. "What about her?"

"What are your intentions toward her?" she asked defensively.

Sydney's face again grew soft, and despite herself, Emily could tell that it indicated a genuine affection for her mother. "She is a remarkable woman," he said, pulling himself back to the present with some difficulty, "with whom I have a great deal in common. We are… friends…"

Emily knew that the unspoken words that ended his thought were 'for the moment' — and she was more than aware of her mother's feelings, as she'd been battling them for nearly six months now. "If you hurt her…" she threatened seriously.

"Then I would deserve anything and everything you or Jarod or any of the rest of your family would care to visit on me," he replied with equal seriousness.

She looked at him from beneath lowered eyelids. "I wanted to keep hating you, damn it," she grumbled. "It was so much easier when I could think of you as an ogre…"

"You mean you don't think I'm such an ogre anymore?" he teased very gently. "I must really be slipping."

"You really do like my mom?" she asked more softly, turning to face him fully for the first time.

"Yes, I really do like her a great deal."

The sincerity was impossible to mistake. "Then you should go spend some more time with her," she advised with a sigh. "I happen to know that she's been looking forward to this trip as much for the time she'd be able to spend with you as for the wedding itself."

"Indeed?" That thought pleased him immensely. "May I escort you back to your husband, then? He was rather upset that you were out of sorts…"

Emily thought for a moment and then put her hand very carefully on the offered arm. "He's just worried about the baby."

"As would I be in his position," Sydney smiled as he opened the library door.

"There he is," Jarod remarked to Jay as Sydney emerged from the back door of the house again, and then both men stared as the old psychiatrist carefully and gently assisted their sister down the steps and back into her husband's keeping.

"Whoa! He must be one helluva smooth operator to have Em calmed down so quickly," Jay shook his head in disbelief. "You should have heard her…"

"Sydney can be quite persuasive when he wants to be," Jarod nodded to the leader of the stringed ensemble that had, until then, been providing soft background music. He walked over to his former mentor with a glow in his eye. "The first dance is traditionally for father and daughter," he stated, remembering the lecture on wedding traditions that he'd gotten just prior to Sam and Mei-Chiang's nuptials. "Missy told me once that you taught her how to waltz to this song," he smiled down, "so I thought maybe…"

The opening chords of "Somewhere My Love" flowed from the little orchestra, and with a quick punch to the shoulder of his grinning protégé, Sydney rose and claimed the hand of his daughter. "Was this your idea, Daddy?" she asked him as he expertly began to lead her about the small square of dance floor that had been waiting for them. "I haven't ever danced with any man without thinking of that day in the Sim Lab…"

"Blame your husband, my dear, he chose the music," Sydney shook his head and smiled as he looked at her glowing face. "I don't have to ask you if you're happy, do I." It wasn't a question.

"Did you have any idea what you were starting when you introduced us all those years ago?" she answered him with another question.

"Not exactly," he admitted, "but, after a while, I was starting to get the idea that the experiment had gone considerably further than ever intended." He danced gracefully with her for a long moment. "As long as you're happy, ma petite…"

"I am, Daddy, I am." Her eyes caught Jarod's and held them. "More than I deserve, I think."

"Rubbish. You deserve all the happiness in the world, ma petite."

She kissed his cheek gently. "You're biased."

"No! You think?" he grinned at her and turned her expertly around the dance floor.

"C'mon, Mom," Jarod urged at his mother's elbow. "We can't let them have all the fun for the entire time."

As the first waltz ended and the music modulated into the opening bars of yet another waltz, several other couples slowly joined Sydney and Missy on the dance floor, so Margaret willingly put her hand in her son's and let him lead her out and then into the gentle waltz. Not long into the waltz, Jarod steered his mother close to Sydney and Missy. "Wanna trade?" he asked his mentor impishly.

With Margaret and Missy chuckling gaily, the two men exchanged partners, and Jarod swept away with his wife in his arms. Sydney paused for a moment, relishing the feel of actually holding Margaret close in something other than a companionable and brief hug and grateful to see Emily moving to the edge of the dance floor on the arm of her husband.

"I saw you come out of the house with her," Margaret said, following his gaze. "I take it you two managed not to kill each other."

"I think I was able to lay a few demons to rest," he replied and then tightened his hold on her. "But I don't want to think of her right now."

"Oh?" she chuckled knowingly.

"Right now I have a beautiful woman dancing with me for the first time, and I intend to do my best to make sure that she doesn't dance with anyone else. Consider your dance card filled, my dear."

"Except my other sons," Margaret smiled up at him. "They deserve a chance too, you know…"

"Oh, all right — one dance each," he bargained with her.

"You're acting very possessive today."

"Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

"On how good a dancer you are."

"Another challenge?" He smiled and bent his lips to her ear. "I told you once before that I never can resist a challenge."

Margaret's face attained a satisfied smile at the multi-layered exchange, and then Sydney led her into a complicated ballroom dance that both tested her own abilities and showed off his own.

"Daddy's sure enjoying himself," Missy commented, looking over to where her father was waltzing expertly with Jarod's mother.

"And Mom is having the time of her life, I can tell," he responded. "We're going to have to watch those two."

"We're not going to be here that much longer," she reminded him. "They'll just have to shift for themselves."

Jarod watched the rapt expressions on the faces of his mentor and his mother and pulled his new wife tighter. "That, I don't think, will be much of a problem…"

"You two be good for Grandma now," Missy told her children, bending down and giving each one a tight hug.

"We will," Ginger assured her, hanging on tightly for a little while, glad she hadn't had to fight her way through the chiffon skirt of her mother's wedding dress for her goodbye. Mommy had changed into regular clothes again — which meant that she'd be able to change too soon. "Are Aunt Emmie and Uncle Nathan staying too?"

"Not for long," Jarod told her. "Aunt Emmie's almost ready to have her baby, and she wants to get home to her doctor. But Uncle Jay and Uncle Ethan are sticking around for a few more days, at least until Mommy and I get back, and Grandma is staying for two whole weeks this time…"

"Yeah!" Davy cheered after his mother released him. "Uncle Jay said he could help me with my science project."

"That toothpick bridge? I'm not surprised," Jarod looked at Missy with a smirk. "Get him to explain the mechanics behind what he tells you," he advised, avoiding his wife's raised eyebrows. "You might find it interesting."

"OK."

"Is that it?" Ethan asked, returning from putting luggage in the back of Jarod's little sports car.

"We're off," Missy nodded and then gave her half brother a hug. "I wish I could see you more often, little brother."

"At least we see each other once in a while now," he reminded her, returning the hug. "That's better than it used to be."

Jarod gave his mother a hug. "You be good now," he told her with a knowing smirk. "We'll see you in a week."

"Why Jarod Russell, whatever gave you the impression that I'd ever be anything BUT good?" she teased him back. "You and Missy have a good time."

Jarod turned and grabbed Missy's hand. Ben Miller had promised that there were still very few tourists wanting to stay at the Inn at this time of year, so he could guarantee them as much privacy as they wanted by simply closing the Inn to customers for the week they'd schedule for their honeymoon. "We will," he said and began to drag her toward the front door.

"NO! Wait! Give us a chance to get out there," Ethan demanded, grabbing a child with each hand and pulling them ahead of the couple, with Margaret echoing the sentiment and following her foster son out the door.

"Did you say goodbye to your Dad?" Jarod asked Missy quietly while they waited for their guests to make the final preparations outside.

Missy nodded. "And to Broots and Tyler and Sam and Em and Crystal…"

"And Deb, I hope…"

"Oh yeah." She smiled widely. She seriously doubted it had been any coincidence that her foster daughter had caught the bouquet. "We can expect another one of these events fairly soon, if Broots gets his way. Maybe we should rent out the back yard on a regular basis?"

"Heaven forbid," Jarod chuckled. "I see two, maybe three more — but after that, it will wait until it's Ginger's turn." It had grown quiet outside the door. Jarod gave Missy a big grin and said, "Ready?"

When she nodded, he threw open the door and moved out onto the porch. Everyone who had stayed had gathered about the front steps with their little bags of rice, and now the cheer went up along with a shower of the white granules. Missy broke into laughter as Jarod led her down the steps of the townhouse and helped her into the sports car, noticing that someone had tied cans and painted "Just Married" on the trunk lid. Jarod threw the car into gear and, with both of them giving a jaunty wave, sped off down the driveway.

Sydney had Margaret's and his own punch glass in hand as he approached the bowl, only to find Broots leaning forward working hard at serving himself. "Here," he told his old friend, "let me help."

Broots sat back and shifted his chair out of the way so his psychiatrist friend could have easier access to the drink bowl. "Who would have imagined it, Syd?"

"What's that?" Sydney asked, handing down the refilled glass and picking up Margaret's.

"That this would be the way things would turn out? I mean, just think — where were we ten, twelve years ago?"

Sydney gazed down at his friend. Broots had chosen to use the wheelchair that day in order not to become overtired, but was slowly getting more and more mobile on his crutches and brace as time when on. Sydney knew that Broots was working hard towards the day that it would be his turn to walk his daughter down the aisle — and that Deb and Kevin had agreed to wait with their wedding until that was possible. And yet, he knew what his old friend was asking.

This wedding and their current situation was a far cry from the hell on earth they had both survived. Broots was now far more than an extra talented computer specialist assigned to a search project now — thanks to his eye for innovation and cutting edge technology, the Centre now boasted some of the most efficient and technologically advanced systems in the country. Firms from around the globe were competing for the right to hire him in to help them set up their systems in a similar fashion. Hardware and software research and development had become a particularly profitable Centre endeavor, and as head of the Computer Science Department, Broots was carrying plenty of authority and responsibility now.

"You know, I can't even remember the last time I saw Missy bark and you cringe," Sydney teased his friend gently.

"Oh, she still barks," Broots assured him. "It's just that she doesn't usually bark at ME anymore, so I don't NEED to cringe." He sipped at the punch. "I just mean… can you believe it?"

"It has been quite the rollercoaster ride, my friend," Sydney replied with a nod. "And now, with Kevin and Jarod restarting the Pretender Project under new guidelines and standards, it seems that in some ways we've come full circle."

"Yeah, I just about fell outta my chair when she announced that one at last week's board meeting, I tell ya," Broots replied with a still disbelieving shake of the head. "And to think that it was Jarod's idea…"

"It's a new day at the Centre," Sydney quoted Charles Parker from nearly ten years earlier.

"That's for damned sure," Broots responded, amazed that old man Parker's words could have such a prophetic dimension.

"Say, why don't you come over and join us?" Sydney suggested, nodding in the direction of the table that he now shared solely with Margaret.

"I don't think so," the technician shook his head. "I'm starting to wear down, and Deb and Kevin are thinking of taking off. Thanks anyway." Broots refrained from mentioning that he'd gotten several glimpses of the interaction between his old friend and Jarod's mother and knew better than to want to get in the way there either. It was good to see Sydney enjoying himself with a pretty woman — and Margaret Russell looked particularly fine that day. "I'll see you at work on Monday."

"Count on it." Sydney extended his hand, and the two friends shook hands firmly. Broots then finished the last of his punch and put the empty glass on the table to be collected and wheeled himself off in search of his daughter and fiancé. Sydney took up both refilled glasses and headed back to the table where Margaret was waiting for him. "Here you are," he said, sitting down and putting her glass down in front of her.

"It was a beautiful wedding," she commented softly, looking around at the mostly empty tables. "What a lovely day."

"You realize I'm going to have to head home soon," he told her with some regret. "I think Davy and Ginger want to introduce Sammy to the tree house while he's still here — and they deserve some decent running around time to work off all the sugar they've been eating…"

"Would you like some company?" Margaret asked softly.

Sydney turned and gazed at her warmly. "I certainly wouldn't mind it," he replied, putting his hand over hers on the table. "You go get the kids changed out of their good clothes and back into play clothes while I get things arranged out here."

"Who's handling clean up?" Margaret asked, casting her eye around the back yard.

"Sam and Tyler," he answered — I just need to let them know that they're now officially in charge, and I thought maybe I should tell your daughter that we're going to take her son with us…"

"What about Crystal?" Margaret asked suddenly. "How is she getting home? Do we need to take her too?"

Sydney smiled and led her eyes over to where Crystal and Jay were sitting at another otherwise abandoned table, talking quietly. "Jay knows where I live — I'm sure he'll see her home safely."

"She still doesn't look well, Sydney."

"She's not, but she is getting better — finally." Sydney was glad to see something approaching a smile on the newest lost lamb he'd invited into his house. Her recovery from the gunshot that had nearly killed her had been agonizingly slow. More surgery had been needed to correct some of the massive but not life-threatening damage that had been left until after she recovered from the first emergency surgery. Her psychological recovery had been equally slow, although the dedicated and determined efforts of two skilled Centre psychiatrists to see her through had eventually paid off. Still, her stamina had been seriously damaged, and her strength sapped easily. She'd spent most of the day before lying down to save up the energy it would take to be up most of the day of the wedding.

Family and Children's Services had at first been very interested in her case once it became known who she was and how old she was. Missy had filed legal papers with the courts almost immediately to have her placed in the custody of the Centre — but an eighteenth birthday less than three weeks into her hospital stay had rendered the entire process moot. When Sydney had insisted that she come stay with him after her release — his guest room once more vacant as Deb and Kevin had moved into the Broots' house when her father had come home from his long hospital stay — Crystal had eventually agreed. Zeke Cavendish quickly became a frequent visitor, helping especially once Sydney resumed his position at the Centre in not letting her be alone for long stretches of time. Missy had quietly removed her from the payroll, had sweepers bring her belongings from the little apartment to Sydney's, and informed the girl in no uncertain terms that her job, when she was finally well, would be to finish her education properly.

"Jay seems to like her," Margaret noted with some approval. "I was wondering if there would ever be any girl to catch his eye." She glanced at her companion. "Interesting that the only one I've ever seen him look twice at is… once more… over here on the other side of the world. What is it about Delaware…"

"He could do worse," Sydney responded, not at all displeased to see his latest orphan with a man who resembled his old protégé both physically and mentally. "She's smart as a whip and a fighter. Don't let that sweet face fool you — she survived on the street for years before she came here. She can still cop an attitude faster than just about anybody I've ever met. Even now, on the mend, it isn't wise to cross her."

"Good. That sounds like just what that boy needs," Margaret grinned. "So, are you going to get going, or what?"

"I can see where Jarod gets his drive," Sydney chuckled at her.

"In that case, you haven't seen nothin' yet."

Now the smile was wide. "Promises, promises."

"Did you say goodbye to your uncle?" Broots asked as Kevin waited patiently for him to make the awkward move from wheelchair to car seat. The revelation of that last bit of Centre intrigue had come only a few weeks earlier, and Broots was still having a hard time trying to keep up with the transitions in relationships that had happened within his unusual family. The only comfort came from knowing that he wasn't alone. Discovering that Kevin was the product of the Centre experimenting with Jacob's genetic material and that of another in order to try to force the recessive Pretender gene to the fore had hit Sydney very hard, yet drawn the young Pretender closer to his uncle as his closest relative. The pending wedding between Deb and Kevin only cemented in real terms the family link that had been there in concept between Sydney and the Broots' for years.

"I caught him while he was talking to Sam and Tyler," Kevin related and pulled up on the seat of the wheelchair to render it flat enough to fit in the trunk of the car. "I guess he and Maggie are going to take the kids over to his place and let them play in the tree house for a while before Sammy leaves for California again tomorrow morning." He slammed the trunk closed and shut Broots' door for him before climbing into the passenger seat next to Deb.

Broots grinned knowingly. Syd and Maggie, eh? So he HADN'T just been seeing things! He'd have to talk to Jarod when the Pretender got home and find out what others thought of the possibilities there.

"So… Are we ready?" Deb asked, smiling as Kevin quietly took her right hand in his for a moment before letting her go to turn the key and run the shift lever.

"Let's hit it," Broots called from the back seat. "I'm beat."

"When are you going to start letting me drive?" Kevin asked his fiancée as she put the car in gear and pulled it away from the curb.

"One of these days," she promised with a smile. "Don't pout — you're driving Dad into the Centre every morning nowadays. You should relax and enjoy being chauffeured around once in a while."

"Dad, didn't you tell me the other day that there was a study out about the frequency of one spouse driving the other?" Kevin tossed over the back of his seat with a mischievous smirk.

"Don't you try to get me in the middle of this," Broots chuckled back. "If you want to drive all the time, I suggest you and Deb go off somewhere private and duke it out between the two of you."

"Duke it out?" Kevin looked over at Deb. "What does a royal title have to do with…"

"Forget it," Deb shook her head, laughing. "I'll explain it to you later."

Sydney stood at his bedroom window and looked down to watch three laughing children scramble like monkeys up the wooden ladder and into the tree house. He tossed his tuxedo jacket onto the bed and tugged to untie the bow tie at his neck and unhook the cummerbund from about his waist. "You kids be careful!" he heard Maggie yell as he came down the stairs far more comfortable with his dress shirt unbuttoned at the top.

He followed Maggie's voice into the kitchen and found her watching out the arcadia door as the kids first put down and then raised the canvas tarp and then lined up along the edge of the platform with feet dangling in the air. Maggie was still dressed in the gown she'd worn to the wedding, although she'd shed the orchid corsage that had been at her wrist at the townhouse and put it in the refrigerator to keep. He paused and drank in the sight of her once more in his kitchen after all this time, and then walked quietly up behind her and put a hand at her shoulder to watch with her for a moment. "Would that we had so much energy."

Maggie leaned back against him. "What a day!" she sighed and then smiled softly to herself when she felt the other hand land on the opposite shoulder. "I've eaten too much, and danced too much, and I'm ready to stay quiet for the next year or two."

Sydney let his hands wander just a little up and down her arms. "I've missed you," he said softly, "more than I expected to. You've been gone too long."

She crossed her hands and captured each of his hands with one of hers and held them in place. "I've missed you too, a heckuva lot more than I thought I would," she answered honestly. "Do you know that after about the second week I was home, I started counting the days until we'd talk on the phone the next time?"

"Had you told me that, I'd have called more often," he bent to her ear and made her skin tingle. "You could have called me more often too, you know — I wouldn't have minded…"

"You would have thought me forward…"

"No, I wouldn't — I would have been glad for the call," he retorted, his hands tightening and then turning her to him. "I don't know about you, but I've been looking forward to our having some time alone together practically from the day you got on the plane to go home last September."

"I have too," she sighed, her hands finding his chest and smoothing the fine linen. "Poor Em was finally getting quite perturbed with me there just before we came — she was the only one I could talk to, and she wasn't wanting to hear me at all."

"I told you before, I don't want to think about her right now."

"Oh, yeah?" she responded, echoing an exchange made not that long before. "And just what DO you want to think about right now?"

"This." He lowered his lips to hers and felt her melt into his embrace at long last.

Ben had given them a cottage of their own for the week — set back from the rest of the inn and practically at the edge of the cliffs. There, even if he had allowed for other boarders, they would still have had near-total privacy except during mealtimes — although the refrigerator in the tiny kitchen was well stocked, as was the small pantry. The cottage had a weathered New England décor with many small-paned windows to give the interior an open and well-lit ambience. The bedroom was nothing fancy — a chest of drawers, a vanity with a massive, round mirror, a pair of night stands with lamps, a set of French doors that opened onto a veranda that quite literally WAS at the edge of the cliffs, and a king-sized bed.

The moon was just rising in the dark evening sky over the waters of the Atlantic when Jarod came through the bedroom door to find Missy standing and gazing out at the sight. She turned to glance at him and then returned her gaze to the sparkling quicksilver waters below. "It's real, isn't it?" she asked softly.

"Yes," he came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. "It's very real." He bent and dropped a kiss on her neck after gently easing her hair out of the way. "We have seven days and six nights of absolute peace, quiet and relaxation. No phones," he kissed her neck again, "no Centre," he kissed her behind her ear, "no kids," he kissed her earlobe and made her giggle, "no interruptions…"

She turned in his arms and put hers around him. "What I meant was, this is real — we did it, what we set out to do — right?"

"You're the Chairman of the Centre, right?" he asked after dropping a kiss on her nose.

"Yeah…"

"The Centre is completely legit now, right?" The kiss landed this time on a cheek.

"Yeah…" Her voice was filled with amusement and something else.

"All the bad guys are where they can't do anymore harm, right?"

"Yeah…" She pulled her hands up so that she could put her arms around his neck and play with his hair a little, finding it interesting the way the moonlight caught on the threads of silver amidst the dark. "And you're back in the Centre where you belong," she smiled at him, "just as I promised you years ago that I'd have you eventually."

"Uh-HUH," he drew her closer to him. "You're saying you have me exactly where you want me, is that it?"

Her smile shone bright in the moonlight. "Kinda looks that way, don't it?"

"And now that you have me back in the Centre, does that mean you're free?" he asked, his chocolate eyes sparkling.

"As free as I'm ever going to get," she replied, her fingers lifting his glasses away from his face and carefully dropping them so that they'd land on a nearby nightstand. "And now that I do have you right where I want you…"

"Yes?" He was interested in where she intended to take their repartee.

With a quick brush of her body against his that was deliberately intended to arouse, she had his eyes wide with surprise and delight as his body instantly responded to hers. "I'm never going to let you go."

Jarod's hands landed on her hips and pulled her into him, making them both sigh in anticipation. The pleasure and excitement at knowing her to be willingly in his arms, loving him as nobody else ever could, had never abated. "Really?" he asked, his voice low and rumbling in the tone that never failed to excite her.

"Mmm-hmmm…" she managed before he had lowered his lips to hers and caught her up in a deep and passionate kiss that took her breath away. His body pressing insistently into her abdomen left her no illusions about his feelings for her, and his hands were already seeking out where the shell top of her pantsuit tucked into her trousers. As they broke apart and her fingers began opening the buttons on his dress shirt, she said breathlessly, "Absolutely. We're right back to you run, I chase — just like always."

He pulled the shell over her head and bent to drop hot kisses on her shoulder. "That sounds kinky, and maybe a little bit fun," he said with hoarse breathlessness as her fingers opened the shirt and spread across the skin of his chest. "Let's see just where I have to run to this time." His hands went to her back and the fasteners of her bra, releasing them and then pulling the garment away so that the next time he pulled her close, it was skin to silken skin.

He pulled her close to kiss her deeply again, his tongue dancing sweetly with hers as one hand went to her back and splayed warmly to hold her and the other began to explore the wonders of the soft flesh he had liberated. She sighed and then moaned and arched into him as his fingers brushed lightly across a nipple made firm and hard by the slight chill of the room and in anticipation of his touch, his kiss.

Impatient now, it was her turn to drop kisses of fire onto his chest while her hands dropped to the front of his pants, undoing the button and pulling the zipper down with a slow movement that brushed softly over his groin. Groaning, he quickly found the zipper to her trousers too, and both of them stepped out of their shoes when they stepped out of the pooled garments. Jarod wasted no time but placed a hand behind her knees and swept her off of her feet and carried her over to the bed, his kisses firm and insistent now.

When he deposited her gently on the bed, his hands drew the pantyhose and panties beneath away, trailing warm and provocative fingers on the newly exposed skin. "Jarod," she called with a voice that shimmered with desire and reached out for him.

He stepped out of his boxers and knelt on the bed over her, looking down at her intently. "You know, I'm not exactly sure who's been doing the running and who's been doing the chasing lately," he whispered to her, bending and beginning to drop kisses in places that made her arch with pleasure, "but I think it's over for the time being."

"Yeah. I do too," she sighed, and pulled him to her.

--

Fin

Author's Notes: I have one of THE best beta teams around, in case nobody's aware of that. Nans, Heidi, Laura, Pam, you ladies are the best – thank you is so inadequate to express the gratitude I have for you all. You've kept me honest, kept me inspired with plot ideas, and kept me motivated to continue writing when those times came that I could have easily have just quit. Deb, your knowledge of tP canon is without rival and having you able to answer my questions has been deeply appreciated.

There are also some regular reviewers I'd like to mention who have helped me remember that people have still been reading this – even though I had no way of knowing if anybody was or not. Mercy, Sky, Art, Elisa, you've been a good part of why I didn't throw in the towel a long time ago. Your remarks and questions have been so appreciated, especially after the move from to here. Without your comments along the way, I would have figured nobody cared anymore and stopped posting publicly altogether (and just sent out email updates to those who asked while I finished the story for myself – I hate to leave things unfinished after so much expended effort.)

Finally, to my son Lee, who has often quite literally been the voice behind me saying, "Aren't you finished with that chapter yet, Mom? GOD you're slow!" I'M FINISHED NOW! ;-

This has been a very long road that began in June, 2002 with one little stand-alone story called "Retrospective" – one that has ultimately taken over a year and a half to complete. I hope you've enjoyed reading "And Then…" as much as I've enjoyed writing it. And no, I have no intentions of carrying the story on any further, folks. From here on, it's up to YOU to use your imaginations! ;-

This has been a neat fandom to write for. Thank you all for your patience and attentiveness.

MMB

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